Using the java.lang.Character Class and Handling Uncaught Exceptions: "All the exceptions that an application typically tries to catch are subclasses of java.lang.Exception, and so are caught by this technique. This excludes exceptions like OutOfMemoryError, which are descendants of java.lang.Error. If you really want to catch everything (not necessarily a good idea), you need to use a 'catch (Throwable e)' clause. " - something I need to do for my Java photo resizer - sometimes it runs out of memory, and I don't handle that very gracefully. Maybe this will help.