What are the differences in error handling between using launch and async/await in coroutines?

In Kotlin coroutines, launch and async differ in error handling:

• launch: starts a coroutine that does not return a result. If an exception occurs inside launch, it is passed to the CoroutineExceptionHandler or propagated to the parent context, which may lead to cancellation of the parent coroutine.

• async: starts a coroutine that returns a Deferred — a deferred result. Exceptions inside async are not thrown immediately but are deferred until await() is called. If await() is not called, the error may go unnoticed.

Example:

val job = launch {
    throw Exception("Error in launch")
}

val deferred = async {
    throw Exception("Error in async")
}

runBlocking {
    job.join() // exception will be handled here
    try {
        deferred.await() // exception is thrown here
    } catch (e: Exception) {
        println("Caught error: ${e.message}")
    }
}

Thus, launch immediately signals an error, while async does so only when attempting to get the result.