An exception is a rarely occurring (exceptional!) condition that requires deviation from the program's normal flow.
Exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence, during computation, of exceptions – anomalous or exceptional events requiring special processing – often changing the normal flow of program execution. It is provided by specialized programming language constructs or computer hardware mechanisms.
In general, an exception is handled (resolved) by saving the current state of execution in a predefined place and switching the execution to a specific subroutine known as an exception handler. If exceptions are continuable, the handler may later resume the execution at the original location using the saved information. For example, a floating point divide by zero exception will typically, by default, allow the program to be resumed, while an out of memory condition might not be resolvable transparently.
