Which concept addresses the handling of special conditions in program execution?

The concept that addresses the handling of special conditions in program execution is exception handling. Exception handling refers to the programming construct that manages errors and unusual conditions that arise during the execution of a program. By using try/catch blocks or similar constructs, developers can write code that responds to exceptions gracefully, rather than allowing the program to crash or behave unpredictably when encountering an error, such as an invalid input or resource unavailability.

This mechanism helps maintain the integrity and reliability of a program by ensuring that it can recover from unexpected issues and continue functioning or provide appropriate feedback to users. Through effective exception handling, developers can log errors, release resources, or even notify users about the issues while maintaining a secure and stable application environment.

While secure coding, input validation, and access control are also important aspects of software security and robustness, they focus on different aspects of programming. Secure coding is about writing code that protects against vulnerabilities, input validation ensures that received data is appropriate and safe to process, and access control determines who can perform actions within a system. Each of these plays a crucial role in comprehensive software security, but none specifically focus on the management of special execution conditions like exception handling does.