How to handle the empty stack exception in Java

Problem Description

How to handle the empty stack exception?

Solution

This example shows how to handle the empty stack exception by using s.empty(), s.pop() methods of Stack class and System.currentTimeMillis()method of Date class.

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.EmptyStackException;
import java.util.Stack;

public class ExceptionalTest {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      int count = 1000000;
      Stack s = new Stack();
      System.out.println("Testing for empty stack");
      long s1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
      for (int i = 0; i <= count; i++)
      
      if (!s.empty())s.pop();
      long s2 = System.currentTimeMillis();
      System.out.println((s2 - s1) + " milliseconds");
      System.out.println("Catching EmptyStackException");
      s1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
      
      for (int i = 0; i <= count; i++) {
         try {
            s.pop();
         } catch (EmptyStackException e) {
         }
      }
      s2 = System.currentTimeMillis();
      System.out.println((s2 - s1) + " milliseconds");
   }
}

Result

The above code sample will produce the following result.

Testing for empty stack
16 milliseconds
Catching EmptyStackException
3234 milliseconds