Question

At first, I was going to do something like the following:

public void WriteToFile(string filePath, string contents)
{
    try
    {
        File.WriteAllText(filePath, contents)
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        //Log error
    }
}

But then I decided to catch all the specific exceptions for the method WriteAllText, like the following:

public void WriteToFile(string filePath, string contents)
{
    try
    {
        File.WriteAllText(filePath, contents);
    }
    catch (IOException ex)
    {
        //An I/O error occured when opening the file
    }
    catch (ArgumentException ex)
    {
       //The exception that is thrown when one of the arguments provided to a method   
         that is not valid.
    }
    catch (UnauthorizedAccessException ex)
    {
       //Unauthorized access
    }
    catch (SecurityException ex)
    {
        //Security exception
    }
    catch (NotSupportedException ex)
    {
        //Invoked method not supported
    } 
}

The above is very verbose and with other methods, it could be more. Is there a better way to do this so I don’t have to write so many catch statements. Also, if an exception is caught, is it best to return from it, log it. I always get confused on how to handle it.

I have noticed some confusion. I am going to handle the exceptions, I left out handling the exception to keep this short. I am going to make use of the ex variable. The question is more about doing just catch(Exception ex) or multiple catch statements.

I also bring this up because I always here that it is better to handle specific exceptions rather than a catch-all. If I have misunderstood this, please clarify on what it means.

Answer 1

It depends on how you are handling the exception. For example, if a SecurityException will cause you to present a dialog to the user to provide their credentials, then you should have a separate catch clause. If not, there is no need to explicitly call them all out.

E.g.

try
{
    File.WriteAllText(filePath, contents);
}
catch (SecurityException ex)
{
    //present dialog
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    //All other exceptions handled the same
}