why my exception is not caught? [duplicate]

Question

I have a code which generates the following exception:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
    at edu.createArrays(ExhaustivePCFGParser.java:2188)
    at edu.considerCreatingArrays(ExhaustivePCFGParser.java:2158)
    at edu.ExhaustivePCFGParser.parse(ExhaustivePCFGParser.java:339)
    at edu.LexicalizedParserQuery.parse(LexicalizedParserQuery.java:247)
    at edu.LexicalizedParser.apply(LexicalizedParser.java:283)
    at current.Gen.textParsen(Gen.java:162)
    at current.Gen.gen(Gen.java:90)
    at current.Foo.main(Foo.java:120)

I tried to catch it with the following code:

try {
    // this is the line which cause the exception
    LinkedList<Foo> erg = Gen.gen(rev);
} catch (Exception e) {
    System.out.println("exception: out of memory");
}   

but when I run the code the exception is not caught. How to solve this?

Answer 1

Because that's not an Exception but an Error.

You could catch it as a Throwable

} catch (Throwable e) {

or specifically as Error

} catch (Error e) {

But there's not a lot you can do with such an error, apart trying to close the application in the cleanest way you can.

From the javadoc :

An Error is a subclass of Throwable that indicates serious problems that a reasonable application should not try to catch