Catch multiple exceptions at once?

Question

It is discouraged to simply catch System.Exception. Instead, only the "known" exceptions should be caught.

Now, this sometimes leads to unnecce

Answer 1

This is a classic problem every C# developer faces eventually.

Let me break your question into 2 questions. The first,

Can I catch multiple exceptions at once?

In short, no.

Which leads to the next question,

How do I avoid writing duplicate code given that I can't catch multiple exception types in the same catch() block?

Given your specific sample, where the fall-back value is cheap to construct, I like to follow these steps:

1. Initialize WebId to the fall-back value.
2. Construct a new Guid in a temporary variable.
3. Set WebId to the fully constructed temporary variable. Make this the final statement of the try{} block.

So the code looks like:

try
{
    WebId = Guid.Empty;
    Guid newGuid = new Guid(queryString["web"]);
    // More initialization code goes here like 
    // newGuid.x = y;
    WebId = newGuid;
}
catch (FormatException) {}
catch (OverflowException) {}

If any exception is thrown, then WebId is never set to the half-constructed value, and remains Guid.Empty.

If constructing the fall-back value is expensive, and resetting a value is much cheaper, then I would move the reset code into its own function:

try
{
    WebId = new Guid(queryString["web"]);
    // More initialization code goes here.
}
catch (FormatException) {
    Reset(WebId);
}
catch (OverflowException) {
    Reset(WebId);
}