Is this a bad practice to catch a non-specific exception such as System.Exception? Why?

by

The mantra is:

  • You should only catch exceptions if
    you can properly handle them

Thus:

  • You should not catch general
    exceptions.

In your case, yes, you should just catch those exceptions and do something helpful (probably not just eat them–you could throw after you log them).

Your coder is using throw (not throw ex) which is good.

This is how you can catch multiple, specific exceptions:

try
{
    // Call to a WebService
}
catch (SoapException ex)
{
    // Log Error and eat it
}
catch (HttpException ex)
{
    // Log Error and eat it
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
    // Log Error and eat it
}

This is pretty much equivalent to what your code does. Your dev probably did it that way to avoid duplicating the “log error and eat it” blocks.

More Related Contents:

  1. Is there a difference between “throw” and “throw ex”?
  2. WPF global exception handler [duplicate]
  3. .NET – What’s the best way to implement a “catch all exceptions handler”
  4. What is ApplicationException for in .NET?
  5. Show line number in exception handling
  6. How slow are .NET exceptions?
  7. Cannot delete directory with Directory.Delete(path, true)
  8. What is the proper way to rethrow an exception in C#? [duplicate]
  9. Avoiding first chance exception messages when the exception is safely handled
  10. Will code in a Finally statement fire if I return a value in a Try block?
  11. Troubleshooting BadImageFormatException
  12. What happens if a finally block throws an exception?
  13. The calling thread cannot access this object because a different thread owns it [duplicate]
  14. Does a locked object stay locked if an exception occurs inside it?
  15. How to check if IOException is Not-Enough-Disk-Space-Exception type?
  16. Active Directory COM Exception – An operations error occurred (0x80072020)
  17. Image.FromStream() method returns Invalid Argument exception
  18. Read Big TXT File, Out of Memory Exception
  19. Best practices: throwing exceptions from properties
  20. What really happens in a try { return x; } finally { x = null; } statement?
  21. How to serialize an Exception object in C#?
  22. More Elegant Exception Handling Than Multiple Catch Blocks? [duplicate]
  23. ArgumentOutOfRangeException on initialized List
  24. How can I handle forms authentication timeout exceptions in ASP.NET?
  25. Exception.Message vs Exception.ToString()
  26. Is there a built in .NET exception that indicates an illegal object state?
  27. In a .net Exception how to get a stacktrace with argument values
  28. Which exceptions shouldn’t I catch?
  29. The ObjectContext instance has been disposed and can no longer be used for operations that require a connection [duplicate]
  30. Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Windows.Interactivity’ [duplicate]

Leave a Comment