What is the purpose of checked exceptions in programming?

Checked exceptions in Java are designed to force the programmer to explicitly handle potential error situations that may occur during program execution. The compiler requires either handling such an exception with a try-catch block or declaring it in the method signature with throws.

This helps improve code reliability, as errors related to external resources (such as files, network) do not go unnoticed and do not lead to unexpected crashes.

Example:

public void readFile(String path) throws IOException {
    FileReader file = new FileReader(path);
    // ...
}

Here, IOException is a checked exception, and the calling method must either handle it or also declare throws.