How to resolve 'Define and throw a dedicated e

Question

I need to throw RuntimeException when length of two lists is not equal. We are using SonarQube tool for code review purpose.

Here is the code:

if (objctArray.length != columnArray.length) {
                throw new RuntimeException(String.format("objctArray and columnArray length is not same. objctArray length = %d, columnArray length = %d", objctArray.length, columnArray.length));
            }

Now, SonarQube raises issue that Define and throw a dedicated exception instead of using a generic one. at throw new RuntimeException line. I don't know which exception I can replace to resolve SonarQube issue.

Answer 1

Don't throw generic exceptions. You should be subclassing Exception and then throwing your subclass, so that the type of the exception actually provides information about what is going on, allowing clients of the function to catch and treat it appropriately.

Answer 2

If those two lists are arguments passed to a method, IllegalArgumentException would be a good candidate to throw. It's a sub-class of RuntimeException, so you'll still be throwing a kind of RuntimeException.

if (objctArray.length != columnArray.length) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException(String.format("objctArray and columnArray length is not same. objctArray length = %d, columnArray length = %d", objctArray.length, columnArray.length));
}