Cleanest way to write retry logic?

Question

Occasionally I have a need to retry an operation several times before giving up. My code is like:

int retries = 3;
while(true) {
  try {
    DoSomething();
         


        

Answer 1

Building on the previous work, I thought about enhancing the retry logic in three ways:

1. Specifying what exception type to catch/retry. This is the primary enhacement as retrying for any exception is just plain wrong.
2. Not nesting the last try in a try/catch, achieving slightly better performance

3. Making it an Action extension method

   static class ActionExtensions
   {
     public static void InvokeAndRetryOnException (this Action action, int retries, TimeSpan retryDelay) where T : Exception
     {
       if (action == null)
         throw new ArgumentNullException("action");
   
       while( retries-- > 0 )
       {
         try
         {
           action( );
           return;
         }
         catch (T)
         {
           Thread.Sleep( retryDelay );
         }
       }
   
       action( );
     }
   }
   

The method can then be invoked like so (anonymous methods can be used as well, of course):

new Action( AMethodThatMightThrowIntermittentException )
  .InvokeAndRetryOnException( 2, TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 1 ) );