Can we catch exception from child class method in base class in C#?

Question

In an interview interviewer asked me this question. Can we catch exception thrown by a child class method in base class? I said no, but he said yes it\'s possible. So I w

Answer 1

Here's a simple example in which a base class is catching an exception from a derived class.

abstract class Base
{
    // A "safe" version of the GetValue method.
    // It will never throw an exception, because of the try-catch.
    public bool TryGetValue(string key, out object value)
    {
        try
        {
            value = GetValue(key);
            return true;
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            value = null;
            return false;
        }
    }

    // A potentially "unsafe" method that gets a value by key.
    // Derived classes can implement it such that it throws an
    // exception if the given key has no associated value.
    public abstract object GetValue(string key);
}

class Derived : Base
{
    // The derived class could do something more interesting then this,
    // but the point here is that it might throw an exception for a given
    // key. In this case, we'll just always throw an exception.
    public override object GetValue(string key)
    {
        throw new Exception();
    }
}