Question

I know in other languages like C/C++ you would return a value like SUCCESS which would indicate to the calling method that the method returned successfully, or failed.

Is there a “nice” way to do this in C# without needing a SUCCESS return variable? Throwing an exception comes to mind, but I am not sure how one would implement this. Is there a custom exception you could throw with your own error message?

Sample code would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You can derive your own exceptions from Exception.

You can return a bool or some numeric convention.

In C#, you have output parameters which are a little easier to use than pointers if you want to return success/fail, but also product output.

I tend to go with exceptions for exceptional things. Logical returns for logical things. i.e. Don’t use exceptions to control program operations. If a file operation unexpectedly fails, then throw an exception. If the app needs to look for a file and generally expects to not find it sometimes as a normal operation, I would not expect the caller to catch an exception, but instead to simply return a bool and choose an appropriate logical path through the applciation.