exceptions
Exception represents errors that occur during application execution.
The following code example demonstrates a catch block that is defined to handle ArithmeticException errors. This catch block also catches DivideByZeroException errors because DivideByZeroException derives from ArithmeticException, and there is no catch block explicitly defined for DivideByZeroException errors.
Imports System
Class ExceptionTestClass
Public Shared Sub Main()
Dim x As Integer = 0
Try
Dim y As Integer = 100 / x
Catch e As ArithmeticException
Console.WriteLine("ArithmeticException Handler: {0}", e.ToString())
Catch e As Exception
Console.WriteLine("Generic Exception Handler: {0}", e.ToString())
End Try
End Sub
End Class
The common language runtime provides an exception handling model that is based on the representation of exceptions as objects, and the separation of program code and exception handling code into try blocks and catch blocks, respectively. There can be one or more catch blocks, each designed to handle a particular type of exception, or one block designed to catch a more specific exception than another block.
If an application handles exceptions that occur during the execution of a block of application code, the code must be placed within a try statement. Application code within a try statement is a try block. Application code that handles exceptions thrown by a try block is placed within a catch statement, and is called a catch block. Zero or more catch blocks are associated with a try block, and each catch block includes a type filter that determines the types of exceptions it handles.
When an exception occurs in a try block, the system searches the associated catch blocks in the order they appear in application code, until it locates a catch block that handles the exception. A catch block handles an exception of type T if the type filter of the catch block specifies T or any type that T derives from. The system stops searching after it finds the first catch block that handles the exception. For this reason, in application code, a catch block that handles a type must be specified before a catch block that handles its base types, as demonstrated in the example that follows this section. A catch block that handles System.Exception is specified last.
