Throwable is the superclass of all errors and exceptions in Java. Error is the superclass of all errors which are not meant to be caught by applications.

Catching either Throwable or Error will also catch OutOfMemoryError or InternalError from which an application should not attempt to recover.

Only Exception and its subclasses should be caught.

The following code snippet illustrates this rule:

try { /* ... */ } catch (Throwable t) { /* ... */ }    // Non-Compliant
try { /* ... */ } catch (Error e) { /* ... */ }        // Non-Compliant
try { /* ... */ } catch (Exception e) { /* ... */ }    // Compliant