Question

try {
}
catch (Exception) {
}

can I just write

try {
}
catch {
}

Is this ok in C# .NET 3.5? The code looks nicer, but I don’t know if it’s the same.

Answer 1

Yes, the advantage of the first form is that you can name the exception variable and then use the object to log the exception details to file, etc…

try {
}
catch (Exception ex) {
  // Log exception message here...
}

Also, it is generally a bad practice to catch the generic Exception class if you can instead catch specific exceptions (such as an IOException) using the first form.