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What does "try/catch" mean in programming?

try/catch is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.

Definition

A control flow construct for handling exceptions. Code that might throw an error is placed inside the try block; if an exception occurs, execution jumps to the catch block which handles it. An optional finally block runs regardless of whether an exception was thrown.

Example

"Wrap the database call in a try/catch: if it throws, log the error and return a 500 instead of crashing the request handler."

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