Question

I am talking about Try ... Catch ex as Exception .... End Try

If I pass exception to Error Logger, shall I pass exception object (ex) or ex.ToString ? Would I lose any information by passing ex.ToString?

Basically I was arguing with my manager, that ex.ToString should be excatly the same as passing ex as an object. M I wrong or right ?

Answer 1

An exception object is different from calling .ToString() on the object itself. It depends on how much information you want to capture about the exception itself. If you just want the message, then calling .ToString() will be sufficient since that ends up giving you the message property from the exception object. The MSDN site lists different properties that belong to the base exception class. If you want to log any of these properties, then you will want the exception class and not just the message string.

Also note that different classes that inherit the base exception class provide additional information. As an example, the HttpException class provides additional properties. That information could be useful depending on what you need to see to troubleshoot.