Apart from exceptions, there are also objects of the Error class. These Errors are thrown when problems arise with the consistency of the Java Virtual Machine. A typical error arises when a class file is corrupted or deleted after the compilation to bytecodes. You will encounter then a ClassFormatError or a NoClassDefFoundError.

Both exceptions and errors are subclasses of the class Throwable. Only objects of this class can be thrown and caught by the java keywords throw, and try & catch. The Throwable class comes with messages, notably getMessage() and printStackTrace().