When is “Try” supposed to be used in C# method names?

Question

We were discussing with our coworkers on what it means if the method name starts with \"Try\".

There were the following opinions:

• Use \"Try\" when the

Answer 1

Uncle Bob gives the example below in his book Clean Code. Whenever we expect an exception to be thrown we can use the Try prefix to a method name:

public void sendShutDown()
{
    try{
        tryToShutDown();
    } catch (DeviceShutDownError e) {
        logger.log(e);            
    }
}

And then (adapted):

private void tryToShutDown()
{
    //some code with no error handling, but
    //something might go wrong here
}

The tryToShutDown method does not make any error handling, because that's the responsibility of the sendShutDown method.

The TryParse pattern of Microsoft violates the clean code guideline that says that we should avoid output parameters.

If we're not developing a new version of C#, we don't have to stick to all Microsoft guidelines. Sometimes they're not the best.