What is the difference between an error and an exception in .NET?

Question

Could you please explain to me what the difference is between an error and an exception?

Answer 1

Exception: When a step in some action fails, all the subsequent steps in that action are simply NOT executed. This is where exceptions shine.

Error: is when, like in the first case you want to halt execution of the current code, but before you do you need to free any resources previously allocated.

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Having that said,

Exception class has HResult property. HRESULT is a 32-bit value, divided into three different fields: a severity code, a facility code, and an error code.

Have a look at this post, will help you understand better

• Error codes or Exceptions?

Answer 2

Usually, I classify them as:

Error - is a known workflow within the application. For example: Username not provided during authentication is an error.
The application can handle these situation & will be able to show friendly messages to the user to prompt for proper input and/or process the data in a different.

Exception - is usually throw when going out of your system and/or something unexpected happens in the application. For example: opening a file handle might throw an exception due to insufficient rights or the file not existing.
Usually in this case, the application can catch these exception and/or write a generic handler to handle all the exceptions in the system.

As a rule of thumb, if you know a particular case exists due to which the application cannot proceed working, label it as an error & handle the case gracefully.

All remaining 'unknown-unknows' can then fall into the category of Exceptions.

HTH.