Is divide by zero an error or an exception?

Question

Basically I want to know how do you differentiate an error from an exception. In some programming languages accessing a non existent file throws an error and in others its an exception. How do you know if some thing is an error or an exception?

Answer 1

Like anything else - you either test it or read the documentation. It can be an "Error" or an "Exception" based on the language.

Eg.

C:

Crashes and gives a divide by zero error.

Ruby:

>> 6 / 0
ZeroDivisionError: divided by 0
from (irb):1:in `/'
from (irb):1

(ZeroDivisionError is actually an exception.)

Java:

Code:

int x = 6 / 0;

Output:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero

Answer 2

It depends on the language :

• some languages don't have exceptions
• some languages don't use exceptions for everything.

For example, in PHP :

• There are exceptions
• But divide by 0 doesn't cause an exception to be thrown : is only raises a warning -- that doesn't stop the execution of the script.

The following portion of code :

echo 10 / 0;
echo "hello, world!";

Would give this result :

Warning: Division by zero in /.../temp.php on line 5
hello, world!