Java Catching base and child exception classes

In Java, you can use the catch block in a try-catch statement to handle exceptions that may be thrown by the code in the try block. If an exception is thrown, the catch block will be executed and the exception will be caught. This will prevent the exception from being propagated up to the calling method.

If you have multiple catch blocks in a try-catch statement, you can catch both a base exception class and a child exception class. For example, consider the following code:

try {
  // Code that may throw an exception
} catch (IOException e) {
  // Code to handle IOException
} catch (Exception e) {
  // Code to handle any other exception
}

In this code, the first catch block will handle any IOException that may be thrown by the code in the try block. The second catch block will handle any other exception that may be thrown, as Exception is the base class for all exceptions in Java.

It's important to note that the order of the catch blocks matters. The exception will be caught by the first catch block whose ExceptionType is compatible with the exception that was thrown. If none of the catch blocks can handle the exception, it will be propagated up to the calling method.

For example, if an IOException is thrown, it will be caught by the first catch block. If a different exception is thrown, such as an IllegalArgumentException, it will be caught by the second catch block.