Question

I sometimes see methods in the .net framework prefixed with “Try” e.g. int.TryParse(..).

I assume this means that the method is the same as a int.parse, but wrapped in a try catch?

Does this mean that if I write methods which have a try catch around them (e.g logging, which I never want to raise an exception), they should be prefixed with “try” as well?

Answer 1

Your assumption may be correct, but this is not the meaning of the Try*** type methods.

The promise is indeed that the method will no throw an exception (how this is managed internally does not matter) when called.

You will notice that these methods return a boolean indicating whether the Try*** was successful or not.

The TryParse methods specifically have an out parameter that will be populated with the result of the parse if successful.

To answer the questions directly:

• There is no specific convention
• If the semantics of the method mean that an exception will not be thrown but the calling code will be informed of success/failure, you can name it Try*** as this is the kind of behavior implied by such a name