Why is try {…} finally {…} good; try {…} catch{} bad?

Question

I have seen people say that it is bad form to use catch with no arguments, especially if that catch doesn\'t do anything:

StreamReader reader=new  StreamRead         


        

Answer 1

The problem with try/catch blocks that catch all exceptions is that your program is now in an indeterminate state if an unknown exception occurs. This goes completely against the fail fast rule - you don't want your program to continue if an exception occurs. The above try/catch would even catch OutOfMemoryExceptions, but that is definitely a state that your program will not run in.

Try/finally blocks allow you to execute clean up code while still failing fast. For most circumstances, you only want to catch all exceptions at the global level, so that you can log them, and then exit out.