Why are empty catch blocks a bad idea?

exception-handling try-catch
Samuel Carrijo picture Samuel Carrijo · Aug 5, 2009 · Viewed 100.6k times · Source

I've just seen a question on try-catch, which people (including Jon Skeet) say empty catch blocks are a really bad idea? Why this? Is there no situation where an empty catch is not a wrong design decision?

I mean, for instance, sometimes you want to get some additional info from somewhere (webservice, database) and you really don't care if you'll get this info or not. So you try to get it, and if anything happens, that's ok, I'll just add a "catch (Exception ignored) {}" and that's all

Answer

Ned Batchelder picture Ned Batchelder · Aug 5, 2009

Usually empty try-catch is a bad idea because you are silently swallowing an error condition and then continuing execution. Occasionally this may be the right thing to do, but often it's a sign that a developer saw an exception, didn't know what to do about it, and so used an empty catch to silence the problem.

It's the programming equivalent of putting black tape over an engine warning light.

I believe that how you deal with exceptions depends on what layer of the software you are working in: Exceptions in the Rainforest.

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