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  4. a try inside another

a try inside another

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved C#
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  • B BobJanova

    Totally agreed on the first point. But regarding the second, he did mention that he might put something else there. I tend to have something which shows them the exception trace in the critical exception handler, because if there is a serious bug, you (the developer) want that information to fix it. In the case of a database connection failure, though, definitely not, because most of those reasons are not because your software is broken.

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    J4amieC
    wrote on last edited by
    #20

    BobJanova wrote:

    you (the developer) want that information to fix it

    And therein is the point. I want it, but I dont EVER want a user to see it. This is what the Windows Event Log (or, perhaps another type of log) is for. You never have a reason to show a user an unsanitized exception message (caveat: they're programmers and can actually act on the information). There is the potential to give away sensitive information if you do so.

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    • J J4amieC

      BobJanova wrote:

      you (the developer) want that information to fix it

      And therein is the point. I want it, but I dont EVER want a user to see it. This is what the Windows Event Log (or, perhaps another type of log) is for. You never have a reason to show a user an unsanitized exception message (caveat: they're programmers and can actually act on the information). There is the potential to give away sensitive information if you do so.

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      Pete OHanlon
      wrote on last edited by
      #21

      J4amieC wrote:

      This is what the Windows Event Log (or, perhaps another type of log) is for.

      Or to put it another way - that's what log4net is for. :-D

      Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

      My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

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      • L Luc Pattyn

        PIEBALDconsult wrote:

        If the catch in the outer try/catch actually does something (like log the Exception), then the inner try/finally should be removed and the finally moved out to make the try/catch into a try/catch/finally.

        If the catch in the outer try/catch actually does something, then your suggestion would change what happens to exceptions thrown by the finally block itself. :)

        Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

        Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

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        PIEBALDconsult
        wrote on last edited by
        #22

        Luc Pattyn wrote:

        exceptions thrown by the finally block itself.

        Of which there are none. or put a try/catch in the finally. :-D

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        • P PIEBALDconsult

          Luc Pattyn wrote:

          exceptions thrown by the finally block itself.

          Of which there are none. or put a try/catch in the finally. :-D

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          Luc Pattyn
          wrote on last edited by
          #23

          PIEBALDconsult wrote:

          Of which there are none

          Of course there are, that is exactly what the three dots are standing for. You can't escape nested try constructs if it has to be fool proof... :)

          Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

          Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

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          • L Luc Pattyn

            PIEBALDconsult wrote:

            Of which there are none

            Of course there are, that is exactly what the three dots are standing for. You can't escape nested try constructs if it has to be fool proof... :)

            Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

            Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

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            PIEBALDconsult
            wrote on last edited by
            #24

            Luc Pattyn wrote:

            You can't escape nested try constructs

            Sure I can, I'll write a method. And I did say that some times they're necessary. However, taking the least scope route, if you want to protect against Exceptions in a finally (and you shouldn't need too), then put the try/catch there.

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            • P PIEBALDconsult

              The outer try/catch in this example is pointless, remove it. If the catch in the outer try/catch actually does something (like log the Exception), then the inner try/finally should be removed and the finally moved out to make the try/catch into a try/catch/finally. Nested try/catches (while sometimes necessary) are a code smell and should be investigated thoroughly. (Or Thoreau[^]ly -- simplify simplify.)

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              Jan Holst Jensen2
              wrote on last edited by
              #25

              Pointless with regards to how the code executes, but not pointless if you are debugging. The outer catch block gives you a place to put a breakpoint so you can see when exceptions occur. I expect that is the reason for it. But the outer try-catch block can be safely removed for production code.

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              • J J4amieC

                ahhh, no no no. If your UI code is mixed with your database access code; you're doing it wrong If you show Exception messages unsanitized to your users; you're doing it wrong

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                Rick van Woudenberg
                wrote on last edited by
                #26

                I totally agree with you, and I would never show an exception to a user. Hence the

                // or show something else..

                , but I still think that you should at least say something when anything important messes up, like .. euhh .. a database connection that fails ? I don't think it's wise to redirect general user messages that could be caused by an exception to the windows logs. Not very user friendly.

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                • J J4amieC

                  ahhh, no no no. If your UI code is mixed with your database access code; you're doing it wrong If you show Exception messages unsanitized to your users; you're doing it wrong

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                  G Offline
                  Gary Wheeler
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #27

                  J4amieC wrote:

                  If your UI code is mixed with your database access code; you're doing it wrong
                   
                  If you show Exception messages unsanitized to your users; you're doing it wrong

                  Ahhh, no. It depends upon the scope of the problem you're trying to solve. If this is a 1,000 line utility app that you're the only user for, this might be perfectly appropriate. If it's a 200,000 line client for a LOB app, then you might have issues.

                  Software Zen: delete this;

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                  • J Jan Holst Jensen2

                    Pointless with regards to how the code executes, but not pointless if you are debugging. The outer catch block gives you a place to put a breakpoint so you can see when exceptions occur. I expect that is the reason for it. But the outer try-catch block can be safely removed for production code.

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                    PIEBALDconsult
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #28

                    Then put a catch on the try/finally.

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                    • P PIEBALDconsult

                      Then put a catch on the try/finally.

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      Jan Holst Jensen2
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #29

                      Except if the exception occurs during execution of the finally-block...

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                      • R Rick van Woudenberg

                        Well, as far as I'm concerned both would be nice. Sure, the connection to the database has priority over user notification, however when something stuffs up, I generally let the user know. In that particular case I would do something like :

                        private void DoSomething()
                        {
                        SqlConnection connection = null;
                        try
                        {
                        connection = new SqlConnection();
                        // Do something that might cause an exception...
                        connection.Open();
                        }
                        catch(SqlException ex)
                        {
                        MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString(); // or something else to notify the customer
                        }
                        finally
                        {
                        if (connection.ConnectionState == ConnectionState.Open)
                        connection.Close();
                        }
                        }

                        Then you actually have both of two worlds. However, that puts us right back to the essence of this discussion. Having a catch clause in a method is not something to be ashamed of, though I get the feeling that many developers think that way.

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                        DragonLord66
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #30

                        If you're in a helper layer such as a DAL then you don't want to add any code that will interact with the user, however you may want to do clean up before the exception is thrown up the chain to a level where the exception can be dealt with by the user. Equally what's the difference between the original example and the following?

                        Private Sub ExceptionMethod()
                            Try
                                DoExceptionCode()
                            Finally
                                DoCleanup()
                            End Try
                        End Sub
                        
                        Private Sub ExceptionHandlerCode()
                            Try
                                ExceptionMethod()
                            Catch ex As Exception
                                ExceptionHandlerHere()
                            End Try
                        End Sub
                        
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                        • D DragonLord66

                          If you're in a helper layer such as a DAL then you don't want to add any code that will interact with the user, however you may want to do clean up before the exception is thrown up the chain to a level where the exception can be dealt with by the user. Equally what's the difference between the original example and the following?

                          Private Sub ExceptionMethod()
                              Try
                                  DoExceptionCode()
                              Finally
                                  DoCleanup()
                              End Try
                          End Sub
                          
                          Private Sub ExceptionHandlerCode()
                              Try
                                  ExceptionMethod()
                              Catch ex As Exception
                                  ExceptionHandlerHere()
                              End Try
                          End Sub
                          
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                          Pete OHanlon
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #31

                          Arrgggh - my eyes. The horror. Case insensitive code in our lovely curly bracketed case sensitive world.

                          Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

                          My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

                          D J 2 Replies Last reply
                          0
                          • P Pete OHanlon

                            Arrgggh - my eyes. The horror. Case insensitive code in our lovely curly bracketed case sensitive world.

                            Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

                            My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

                            D Offline
                            D Offline
                            DragonLord66
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #32

                            Sorry, I'll use Smalltalk next time. More seriously I had a vb editor open so it was just quicker to type it in there with the auto complete than to start up a new c# editor for the example (formatting purposes)

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                            • D DragonLord66

                              Sorry, I'll use Smalltalk next time. More seriously I had a vb editor open so it was just quicker to type it in there with the auto complete than to start up a new c# editor for the example (formatting purposes)

                              P Offline
                              P Offline
                              Pete OHanlon
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #33

                              DragonLord66 wrote:

                              I had a vb editor open

                              In the name of all that's holy man, why?

                              Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

                              My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

                              D 1 Reply Last reply
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                              • P Pete OHanlon

                                DragonLord66 wrote:

                                I had a vb editor open

                                In the name of all that's holy man, why?

                                Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

                                My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

                                D Offline
                                D Offline
                                DragonLord66
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #34

                                We have a very large code base of VB code that was written simply because it's easier to get a working prototype in vb (pre 2010 and c# runtime code editing), and the prototypes turned into production code...

                                1 Reply Last reply
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                                • A Ali Al Omairi Abu AlHassan

                                  guys; I was exminning some code and i found this:

                                  try
                                  {
                                      try
                                      {
                                          ...
                                      }
                                      finally
                                      {
                                          ...
                                      }
                                  }
                                  catch
                                  {
                                      throw;
                                  }
                                  

                                  I am wondering if this is legal. I mean catch anything and trow anything; or maybe it's usefull for something. because the developer who write this code is someone i believe he is an expert. Thank you;

                                  Help people,so poeple can help you.

                                  P Offline
                                  P Offline
                                  patbob
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #35

                                  My memory may not be correct, but I seem to recall a time in C++ when try-finally was a macro and try-catch a language intrinsic, so you couldn't mix them together. If you wanted to do both, you pretty much had to code it up that way. Maybe I recall wrong though? Unless there's more code inside the try-catch that isn't inside the try-finally, it doesn't make much sense to code it that way.

                                  patbob

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • P Pete OHanlon

                                    Arrgggh - my eyes. The horror. Case insensitive code in our lovely curly bracketed case sensitive world.

                                    Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads

                                    My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility

                                    J Offline
                                    J Offline
                                    James Lonero
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #36

                                    Oh come on, its just another way of saying (explaining) the same thing.

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • A Ali Al Omairi Abu AlHassan

                                      guys; I was exminning some code and i found this:

                                      try
                                      {
                                          try
                                          {
                                              ...
                                          }
                                          finally
                                          {
                                              ...
                                          }
                                      }
                                      catch
                                      {
                                          throw;
                                      }
                                      

                                      I am wondering if this is legal. I mean catch anything and trow anything; or maybe it's usefull for something. because the developer who write this code is someone i believe he is an expert. Thank you;

                                      Help people,so poeple can help you.

                                      S Offline
                                      S Offline
                                      SilimSayo
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #37

                                      It is legal but personally, I prefer

                                      try
                                      {

                                      ////whole batch of statements that could give raise to an exception

                                      }
                                      //Several catch blocks
                                      catch (IOException e)
                                      {

                                      }
                                      catch(MyException e)
                                      {

                                      }
                                      .
                                      .
                                      .
                                      .
                                      .
                                      .
                                      catch (Exception e)///Generic catch block
                                      {

                                      }

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • A Ali Al Omairi Abu AlHassan

                                        guys; I was exminning some code and i found this:

                                        try
                                        {
                                            try
                                            {
                                                ...
                                            }
                                            finally
                                            {
                                                ...
                                            }
                                        }
                                        catch
                                        {
                                            throw;
                                        }
                                        

                                        I am wondering if this is legal. I mean catch anything and trow anything; or maybe it's usefull for something. because the developer who write this code is someone i believe he is an expert. Thank you;

                                        Help people,so poeple can help you.

                                        S Offline
                                        S Offline
                                        Sandy_L_Schultz
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #38

                                        That's a do-while. :laugh:

                                        1 Reply Last reply
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