Analysis of Exception Handling Patterns in Java Projects: An Empirical Study

Exception handling is a powerful tool provided by many programming languages to help developers deal with unforeseen conditions. Java is one of the few programming languages to enforce an additional compilation check on certain subclasses of the Exception class through checked exceptions. As part of this study, empirical data was extracted from software projects developed in Java. The intent is to explore how developers respond to checked exceptions and identify common patterns used by them to deal with exceptions, checked or otherwise. Bloch's book - “Effective Java” [1] was used as reference for best practices in exception handling - these recommendations were compared against results from the empirical data. Results of this study indicate that most programmers ignore checked exceptions and leave them unnoticed. Additionally, it is observed that classes higher in the exception class hierarchy are more frequently used as compared to specific exception subclasses.