How to decide between using if/else vs try/catch?

Question

When writing code, how does one decide between using if/else or try/catch? For example, in checking for a file, should this be based on if/else (if (File.Exists)) or a try/c

Answer 1

Exceptional handling should only be done or used in exceptional cases.

In a scenario which depends on whether a File exists or not it doesn't make sense to use try catch block when simply you can do

if(File.Exists(path))
{
}
else
{

}

Exceptional handling cause a lot of performance hit so try to minimize the exceptional cases by applying more check in your code like if File.Exists(path))