Arizona State University (ASU) CSE100 Principles of Programming with C++ Midterm 1 Practice Exam

The `try` and `catch` blocks in C++ are specifically designed to handle runtime exceptions, which are errors that occur during the execution of a program. These exceptions can arise from various situations, such as trying to divide by zero, accessing an out-of-bounds array index, or encountering issues during file I/O operations. The primary purpose of using `try` and `catch` is to intercept these exceptions so that the program can react appropriately, such as by logging an error message, cleaning up resources, or gracefully terminating operations, instead of crashing unexpectedly.

In contrast, syntax errors occur when the code violates the grammatical rules of the programming language, and these must be resolved before the program can even be compiled. Logical errors are flaws in the logic of the program that result in incorrect behavior or output, but they do not generate exceptions that can be caught by the `try` and `catch` mechanism. Compilation errors happen during the compilation phase when the code fails to compile into machine-readable format due to syntax issues or incorrect type usages, again unrelated to exception handling during execution. Thus, the use of `try` and `catch` is specifically targeted at managing runtime exceptions, making this choice the most accurate response.