Why aren't variables declared in “try” in scope in “catch” or “finally”?

Question

In C# and in Java (and possibly other languages as well), variables declared in a \"try\" block are not in scope in the corresponding \"catch\" or \"finally\" blocks. For e

Answer 1

When you declare a local variable it is placed on the stack (for some types the entire value of the object will be on the stack, for other types only a reference will be on the stack). When there is an exception inside a try block, the local variables within the block are freed, which means the stack is "unwound" back to the state it was at at the beginning of the try block. This is by design. It's how the try / catch is able to back out of all of the function calls within the block and puts your system back into a functional state. Without this mechanism you could never be sure of the state of anything when an exception occurs.

Having your error handling code rely on externally declared variables which have their values changed inside the try block seems like bad design to me. What you are doing is essentially leaking resources intentionally in order to gain information (in this particular case it's not so bad because you are only leaking information, but imagine if it were some other resource? you're just making life harder on yourself in the future). I would suggest breaking up your try blocks into smaller chunks if you require more granularity in error handling.