Exception chaining

Question

Hello,
To my surprise in JDK 1.4.1_02 some exceptions like
IllegalArgumentException, IllegalStateException
do not support constructors for exception chaining,
e.g. IllegalStateException(Throwable cause)
The method Throwable.initCause(Throwable)
however allows the setting of the cause.
The result is ugly code if I want to set the cause:
instead of
throw new new IllegalStateException(theCause);
I must write:
IllegalStateException ex = new IllegalStateException();
ex.initCause(theCause);
throw ex;
Or is this omission of constructors on purpose for some reason?

Answer 1

Another alternative is to subclass IllegalStateException and call initCause in the constructor:
  public class MyIllegalStateException extends IllegalStateException {
    public MyIllegalStateException(Throwable e) {
      initCause(e);
  }Then you just do the following:
  throw new MyIllegalStateException(e);