What is an "Exception-controlled" loop?

Question

I'm trying to do a question on my study guide that asks:

Write an exception-controlled loop that loops until the user enters an integer between 1 and 5.

I can't decipher what this question really means since I've never heard of that term before, but this is my best guess:

    Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
    int a = 0;

    while(a <= 0 || a > 5)
    {
        try {
            a = input.nextInt();

            if(a <= 0 || a > 5)
                throw new OutOfRangeException(); //my own Excpt. class
        } catch (OutOfRangeException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }

What do you you guys think? Am I missing something here?

Answer 1

I think that your catch clause should be outside the loop

 Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
 int a = 0;
 try
 {
    while(true)
    {       
        a = input.nextInt();
        if(a <= 0 || a > 5)
            throw new OutOfRangeException(); //my own Excpt. class
    } 
 }
 catch (OutOfRangeException e) {
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
 }

I haven't actually heard the term "exception controlled loop", but I think it means that it's an infinite loop that exits upon exception. Seems logical.

As the comments say, if you need to loop until the user enters a number between 1 and 5, the condition to throw should be

 if(a >= 1 && a <= 5)

Answer 2

"Exception-controlled" is not a standard term, and anyway, using exceptions for control flow is a well-known bad practice. But to demonstrate it most clearly (i.e. badly), I would leave out the loop check and just write while(true) so that the loop is obviously only controlled by the exception.