<p> This method might ignore an exception.&nbsp; In general, exceptions should be handled or reported in some way, or they should be thrown out of the method.</p>

<p> This method uses a try-catch block that catches Exception objects, but Exception is not thrown within the try block, and RuntimeException is not explicitly caught. It is a common bug pattern to say try { ... } catch (Exception e) { something } as a shorthand for catching a number of types of exception each of whose catch blocks is identical, but this construct also accidentally catches RuntimeException as well, masking potential bugs. </p> <p>A better approach is to either explicitly catch the specific exceptions that are thrown, or to explicitly catch RuntimeException exception, rethrow it, and then catch all non-Runtime Exceptions, as shown below:</p> <pre><code>try { ... } catch (RuntimeException e) { throw e; } catch (Exception e) { ... deal with all non-runtime exceptions ... } </code></pre>