How to catch an Exception from a thread

I have Java main class, in the class, I start a new thread, in the main, it waits until the thread dies. At some moment, I throw a runtime exception from the thread, but I can't catch the exception thrown from the thread in the main class.

Here is the code:

public class Test extends Thread
{
  public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException
  {
    Test t = new Test();

    try
    {
      t.start();
      t.join();
    }
    catch(RuntimeException e)
    {
      System.out.println("** RuntimeException from main");
    }

    System.out.println("Main stoped");
  }

  @Override
  public void run()
  {
    try
    {
      while(true)
      {
        System.out.println("** Started");

        sleep(2000);

        throw new RuntimeException("exception from thread");
      }
    }
    catch (RuntimeException e)
    {
      System.out.println("** RuntimeException from thread");

      throw e;
    } 
    catch (InterruptedException e)
    {

    }
  }
}

Anybody knows why?

Use a Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler.

Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler h = new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler() {
    @Override
    public void uncaughtException(Thread th, Throwable ex) {
        System.out.println("Uncaught exception: " + ex);
    }
};
Thread t = new Thread() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        System.out.println("Sleeping ...");
        try {
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            System.out.println("Interrupted.");
        }
        System.out.println("Throwing exception ...");
        throw new RuntimeException();
    }
};
t.setUncaughtExceptionHandler(h);
t.start();

That's because exceptions are local to a thread, and your main thread doesn't actually see the run method. I suggest you read more about how threading works, but to quickly summarize: your call to start starts up a different thread, totally unrelated to your main thread. The call to join simply waits for it to be done. An exception that is thrown in a thread and never caught terminates it, which is why join returns on your main thread, but the exception itself is lost.

If you want to be aware of these uncaught exceptions you can try this:

Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler() {
    @Override
    public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
        System.out.println("Caught " + e);
    }
});

More information about uncaught exception handling can be found here.