How is the hierarchy of exceptions structured in a programming language?

In Java, the hierarchy of exceptions is organized around the base class Throwable. From it, two main subclasses are inherited:

• Error — errors that are usually not handled by the application (e.g., OutOfMemoryError).
• Exception — exceptions that can and should be handled.

Further, Exception is divided into:

• Checked exceptions — require mandatory handling or declaration in the method (e.g., IOException).
• Unchecked exceptions, which inherit from RuntimeException (e.g., NullPointerException).

Thus, the structure looks like this:

Throwable
├── Error
└── Exception
    ├── RuntimeException
    └── (other checked exceptions)

This allows the compiler and developers to distinguish between exception types and handle them correctly.