Where do you like to catch exceptions and why?

Question

Where do you like to catch exceptions and why?

I\'m interested in seeing where people find it useful to put their try/catch blocks in the hope that some general patt

Answer 1

In a Delphi Windows Application, the main message handling loop for your application (i.e. at the bottom of the call stack) handles your exceptions by showing a message box. In my opinion this is the best place to handle exceptions.

By catching exceptions in your own methods for the sole purpose of showing a message box to the user, you're denying any code calling your method of knowing that an exception actually occured and that the method infact failed.

I would only handle an exception if:

• I need to do some cleanup (like a DB rollback) in which case I would reraise the exception after the cleanup is done.
• I have some more information to add to the exception.
• My method can succeed in it's purpose despite the exception.