Error vs. Exception — What's the Difference?

A serious problem that a program cannot anticipate or recover from.

Managed using specific exception handling constructs.

Often leads to program termination.

Allows for graceful error recovery or management.

Usually indicates system-level issues.

Arises from conditions programmers can anticipate.

Reflects critical failures in the environment.

Can be specific and diverse in nature.

Not handled by conventional exception handling.

An event that can disrupt the normal flow of a program but can be handled.

An error (from the Latin error, meaning "wandering") is an action which is inaccurate or incorrect. In some usages, an error is synonymous with a mistake.

A person or thing that is excluded from a general statement or does not follow a rule

A mistake

The act of excepting or the condition of being excepted; exclusion.

An act, assertion, or belief that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true.

One that is excepted, especially a case that does not conform to a rule or generalization.

The condition of having incorrect or false knowledge.

An objection or a criticism

The act or an instance of deviating from an accepted code of behavior.

(Law) A formal protest against a ruling of the trial court on a question of law, such as the admissibility of a certain piece of evidence, to make clear for the record that the issue is being preserved for a potential appeal.

A mistake.

The act of excepting or excluding; exclusion; restriction by taking out something which would otherwise be included, as in a class, statement, rule.

(Mathematics) The difference between a computed or measured value and a true or theoretically correct value.

That which is excluded from others; a person, thing, or case, specified as distinct, or not included.

Abbr. E(Baseball) A defensive fielding or throwing misplay by a player when a play normally should have resulted in an out or prevented an advance by a base runner.

(legal) An objection, on legal grounds; also, as in conveyancing, a clause by which the grantor excepts or reserves something before the right is transferred.

(uncountable) The state, quality, or condition of being wrong.

An objection; cavil; dissent; disapprobation; offense; cause of offense; — usually followed by to or against.

(countable) A mistake; an accidental wrong action or a false statement not made deliberately.

(computing) An interruption in normal processing, typically caused by an error condition, that can be raised ("thrown") by one part of the program and handled ("caught") by another part.

Sin; transgression.

The act of excepting or excluding; exclusion; restriction by taking out something which would otherwise be included, as in a class, statement, rule.

A failure to complete a task, usually involving a premature termination.

That which is excepted or taken out from others; a person, thing, or case, specified as distinct, or not included; as, almost every general rule has its exceptions.

The difference between a measured or calculated value and a true one.

An objection, oral or written, taken, in the course of an action, as to bail or security; or as to the decision of a judge, in the course of a trail, or in his charge to a jury; or as to lapse of time, or scandal, impertinence, or insufficiency in a pleading; also, as in conveyancing, a clause by which the grantor excepts something before granted.

A play which is scored as having been made incorrectly.

An objection; cavil; dissent; disapprobation; offense; cause of offense; - usually followed by to or against.

One or more mistakes in a trial that could be grounds for review of the judgement.

A deliberate act of omission;

Any alteration in the DNA chemical structure occurring during DNA replication, recombination or repairing.

An instance that does not conform to a rule or generalization;

(computing) To function improperly due to an error, especially accompanied by error message.

Grounds for adverse criticism;

(telecommunications) To show or contain an error or fault.

(nonstandard) To err.

A wandering; a roving or irregular course.

A wandering or deviation from the right course or standard; irregularity; mistake; inaccuracy; something made wrong or left wrong; as, an error in writing or in printing; a clerical error.

A departing or deviation from the truth; falsity; false notion; wrong opinion; mistake; misapprehension.

A moral offense; violation of duty; a sin or transgression; iniquity; fault.

The difference between the approximate result and the true result; - used particularly in the rule of double position.

The difference between an observed value and the true value of a quantity.

A mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact.

A fault of a player of the side in the field which results in failure to put out a player on the other side, or gives him an unearned base.

A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention;

Inadvertent incorrectness

A misconception resulting from incorrect information

(baseball) a failure of a defensive player to make an out when normal play would have sufficed

Departure from what is ethically acceptable

(computer science) the occurrence of an incorrect result produced by a computer

Part of a statement that is not correct;

Exceptions can be handled using try-catch blocks that allow programmers to define how the program should respond to specific problems.

Errors can degrade system performance significantly, often leading to system instability or crashes.

Errors often stem from issues outside a programmer's control, such as hardware failures or resource limits, and generally cannot be prevented.

Common examples include IOException, SQLException, and NullPointerException.

Because errors indicate serious issues that are not expected to be recoverable by the application itself.

Ignoring exceptions is possible but not advisable as it can lead to unforeseen crashes and data corruption.

Errors are critical problems often caused by the system that cannot be handled by the program, while exceptions are conditions that a program can handle.

While many exceptions are recoverable, the ability to recover depends on the nature of the exception and how it's handled in the program.

While not all errors lead to crashes, they significantly raise the likelihood of a program failing.

An exception handler is a block of code that responds to specific exceptions, allowing a program to continue operation or terminate gracefully.

Generally, errors cause the program to terminate, but some severe exceptions, if not properly managed, can have similar effects.

If an exception is not caught, it can cause the program to terminate unexpectedly, similar to an unhandled error.

Modern programming languages provide extensive exception handling features such as try, catch, and finally blocks.

By implementing robust exception handling and validating inputs and configurations, developers can minimize the impact of exceptions.

Best practices include anticipating common issues, using comprehensive logging, and implementing fail-safe mechanisms to enhance reliability.