There are three methods to print exception information in Java. They are all in the Throwable class. Since Throwable is the base class for all exceptions and errors, we can use these three methods on any exception object.

1. java.lang.Throwable.printStackTrace() method : With this method, we get the name (e.g. java.lang.ArithmeticException) and description (e.g. /Nil) of the colon-separated exception and the stack trace (where this exception occurred in the code) on the next line.

         Syntax:

public void printStackTrace()

// Java program to demonstrate
// printStackTrace method
public class Test
{
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		try
		{
			int a = 20/0;
		} catch (Exception e)
		{
			// printStackTrace method
			// prints line numbers + call stack
			e.printStackTrace();
			
			// Prints what exception has been thrown
			System.out.println(e);
		}
	}
}

Runtime Exception:

java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero
    at Test.main(Test.java:9)

Output:

java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero

2. toString() method :  With this method we only get the name and description of the exception. Note that this method has been overridden in the Throwable class.

// Java program to demonstrate
// toString method
public class Test
{
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		try
		{
			int a = 20/0;
		} catch (Exception e)
		{
			// toString method
			System.out.println(e.toString());
			
			// OR
			// System.out.println(e);
		}
	}
}

Output:

java.lang.ArithmeticException: / by zero

3. java.lang.Throwable.getMessage() method : By using this method, we will only get description of an exception.

Syntax:

public String getMessage()

// Java program to demonstrate
// getMessage method
public class Test
{
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		try
		{
			int a = 20/0;
		} catch (Exception e)
		{
			// getMessage method
			// Prints only the message of exception
			// and not the name of exception
			System.out.println(e.getMessage());
			
			// Prints what exception has been thrown
			// System.out.println(e);
		}
	}
}

Output:

/ by zero