Why can't I catch a generic exception in C#?

Question

I was doing some unit testing on code that could throw a number of exceptions depending on the inputs. So I tried something like the below code: (simplified for the example)

Answer 1

It works without Debug

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharpgeneral/thread/0b0e5bc9-fab2-45b1-863b-40abae370475

Ugly workaround (you may add #if DEBUG) :

  try
  {
    throw new T();
  }
  catch (Exception dbgEx)
  {
    T ex = dbgEx as T;
    if (ex != null)
    {
      Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
    }
  }