What is the purpose of the 'throws' keyword in OOP?

Object Oriented Programming Questions Medium



47 Short 36 Medium 25 Long Answer Questions Question Index

What is the purpose of the 'throws' keyword in OOP?

In object-oriented programming (OOP), the 'throws' keyword is used to indicate that a method may throw an exception.

Exceptions are unexpected events or errors that occur during the execution of a program. When a method is declared with the 'throws' keyword, it means that the method can potentially generate an exception and it is the responsibility of the caller to handle or propagate the exception.

The purpose of the 'throws' keyword is to provide a way for the method to communicate to the caller that it may encounter exceptional situations that need to be handled. By declaring the exceptions that a method can throw using the 'throws' keyword, the method signature becomes more explicit and allows the caller to be aware of the potential exceptions that need to be handled.

When a method is declared with the 'throws' keyword, the caller of that method must either handle the exception using a try-catch block or propagate the exception further up the call stack using the 'throws' keyword in its own method signature. This allows for a more structured and controlled way of handling exceptions in a program.

In summary, the purpose of the 'throws' keyword in OOP is to indicate that a method may throw an exception and to enforce the responsibility of handling or propagating the exception to the caller.