• All exceptions derive from System.Exception and therefore, they can be handled by a generic catch block.
• A generic catch is a catch block with no data type.
  • They are rarely used because there is no way to capture any information about the exception.
  • C# doesn’t support the ability to throw an exception of type object.
  • It is preferable to include a catch block that is specific to the most derived type.
• Avoid using exception handling to deal with expected situations or normal control flow.
  • Instead of relying on an exception to validate data entered by the user, provide a means of checking before attempting the conversion.
• Exceptions are designed specifically for tracking exceptional, unexpected, and potentially fatal situations.
  • C# incurs a slight performance hit when throwing an exception, taking microseconds compared to the nanoseconds most operations take.
  • The runtime has to search all outer catch blocks until it finds a matching block.
    • When it doesn’t, has to look if a debugger is attached, it takes slightly more time.
• Use exception handling if the event doesn't occur very often, that is, if the event is truly exceptional and indicates an error.
  • When you use exception handling, less code is executed in normal conditions.
• There are situations in which a finally block won’t run.
  • For example, when the try block goes into an infinite loop, it will never exit the try block and never enter the finally block.
  • In situations such as a power outage, no other code will run.
• Preventing the finally block from running can be achieved by using Environment.FailFast().
  • This method has two different overloads: one that takes a string and another one that takes an exception.
  • The method writes the message/exception to the Windows application event log, and the application is terminated.
• It’s important to make sure that your finally block does not cause any exceptions.
  • When this happens, control immediately leaves the finally block and moves to the next outer try block, if any.
  • The original exception is lost and you can’t access it anymore.
• In catch blocks, always order exceptions from the most specific to the least specific.
• Catch only the exceptions that you can handle.
  • For example, opening a file for exclusive read-write access may throw a IOException.
  • Other exception types should be left for callers higher in the stack.
• Don’t hide (bury) exceptions you don’t fully handle.
  • This may result in a critical system problem going undetected.
  • Unless code takes explicit action to handle an exception or explicitly determines certain exceptions to be innocuous, catch blocks should re-throw exceptions instead of catching them and hiding them from the caller.
• Use System.Exception and general catch blocks rarely.
  • All exceptions derive from System.Exception, even system level exceptions.
    • These exceptions include OutOfMemoryException and StackOverflowException.
  • The best way to handle these System.Exceptions is to allow them to go unhandled or to gracefully shut down the application.
    • These exceptions are runtime exceptions that the developer cannot write code to recover from.
    • They were defaulted to nonrecoverable such that catching them without rethrowing them will cause the CLR to rethrow them anyway.

throw

• Use throw; rather than throw <exception object> inside a catch block.
  • Rethrowing an specific exception will reset the stack trace to the location of the rethrown call.
  • Unless you are rethrowing with a different exception type or intentionally hiding the original call stack, use throw to allow the same exception to propagate up the call stack.
• When rethrowing different exceptions, to preserve the original exception set the new exception’s InnerException property.
• Rethrowing a different exception should be reserved for the following situations:
  1. Changing the exception type clarifies the problem.
  2. Private data is part of the original exception.
  3. The exception type is too specific for the caller to handle appropriately.
• Do not try to reuse exception object instances.
  • Each time you throw an exception, create a new one.
  • This is true especially when working in a multi-threaded environment, where the stack trace can be changed by another thread.
• An empty catch block generates a catch(object) block.
  • This means that regardless of the type thrown, the empty catch block will catch it.
  • It is not possible to explicitly declare a catch(object) exception block.

System.Exception Properties

• StackTrace: A string that describes all the methods that are currently in execution.
  • This gives you a way of tracking which method threw the exception and how that method was reached.