Logging Throwable in main()

Question

Catching Throwable is unadvisable for reasons outlined in different posts. However, would it make sense to have a main structured like below? If the Throwable line is removed, then errors would not be logged.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        launchMyApplication();
    } catch (SomeCheckedException e) {
        //recover if you can, log it if you can't
    } catch (Exception e) {
        //recover if you can (unlikely), log it if you can't
    } catch (Throwable e) {
        //Don't try to recover, but log it
        logger.error("Oops: {}", e);
    }
}

So if the exception is caught by the first cathces would it rethrow to be caught by the last line? Otherwise it wont get past `catch(Exception e)`. — Jivings, Mar 30 '12 at 10:15
There are some interesting information about catching Throwable here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1097503/best-practices-for-catching-throwable-in-java — dexametason, Mar 30 '12 at 10:19
@Jivings Throwable will be invoked if some error occurs, like StackOverflowError, as they are the subclasses of throwable but not Exception. — Chandra Sekhar, Mar 30 '12 at 10:21

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 30 '12 at 10:27

10

Implementing this way will only handle throwables thrown on the main thread.

The best way to solve this issue is to use Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler().

edited Mar 30 '12 at 10:27

assylias

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answered Mar 30 '12 at 10:22

ControlAltDel

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Logging Throwable in main()

1 Answers1