Throwing exceptions in Java

Question

I have a question about throwing exceptions in Java, a kind of misunderstanding from my side, as it seems, which I would like to clarify for myself.

I have been read

Answer 1

Doesn't the first way of handling exceptions does exactly this (the try-throw-catch mechanism)? I mean, it throws an exception and catches it in the same method.

That's not a "way of handling exceptions" - it's utter nonsense. The whole point of exceptions is to let another method up the call stack handle it. If you're going to handle the condition within the same method, there's no point in using an exception - that's what if() is for! If that makes the control flow of your method too complicated, you should probably refactor some of the logic into separate methods - and then it might make sense to have those throw exception that the remaining method body catches.

That being said, I can imagine one special case where it could make sense to throw and catch an exception in the same method: when you're already calling a method that may throw an exception and have a catch block to handle it, then in some cases it could make sense to throw an exception to indicate a similar problem that the existing catch block can handle in the same way.