What is the purpose of using try, catch blocks?

Question

Is it a replacement for if, then blocks? I have seen a lot of code where they are used like that.

Answer 1

No, it is not a replacement for an if, then block, it serves an entirely different purpose. The objective of a try, catch block is to try and do something which could fail and raise an exception (e.g., read a file from disk, but the file might not be there, etc.). After catching an exception, you can handle it.

try {
   riskyOperation();
catch (ExpectedException) {
   handleException();
}

Answer 2

The purpose of try catch blocks to allow you to try to perform and action and then if an exception occurs, catch the exception and deal with it gracefully rather than crashing.