Question

What is the purpose of the argument that is passed to an exception object's constructor? What happens if you do not pass an argument to the constructor?

Short answer

Answer: The purpose of the argument passed to an exception object's constructor is to provide more information about the exception, usually as a descriptive message, which helps in understanding the cause of the exception. If no argument is passed to the constructor, an instance of the exception object is still created, but it may not contain specific information about the exception's cause and may result in a default or empty message, making debugging more challenging.

Step-by-step solution

Purpose of the argument passed to an exception object's constructor

The purpose of the argument passed to an exception object's constructor is to provide more information about the exception, usually as a descriptive message. This message can be useful in understanding the cause of the exception and may provide hints for resolving the issue. In most programming languages, the argument is passed as a string, although it could also be passed as an object or other data type, depending on the language and use case.

Behavior when no argument is passed to the constructor

If you do not pass an argument to an exception object's constructor, it will still create an instance of the exception object, but it may not have any additional information about the exception apart from its type. In most programming languages, this will result in a default message or an empty message being associated with the exception. It may make debugging more challenging since there won't be any specific information about the exception's cause, but the program will still be able to handle the exception as needed.