Throwing Exceptions and Keeping the Stack Trace

Since its beginning, C# offered two ways to rethrow an exception in a catch block:

• With the caught exception as a parameter to throw; (e.g.: throw ex);
• Without any explicit parameter, in which case, it would be assumed to be the currently caught exception (e.g.: throw).

What was the difference? Well, if you were to throw an exception explicitly, its stack trace would be cleared, and replaced by a new one, starting on the current method; on the other hand, the parameterless throw clause would keep the stack trace, which is what we normally want. That is why the recommendation is to use the parameterless throw version:

void MyMethod()

{

    try

    {

        //do something that possibly throws an exception

    }

    catch (Exception ex)

    {

        DoSomethingWithThis(ex);

        throw;

    }

}

void DoSomethingWithThis(Exception ex)

{

    //do something with ex

}

As of .NET 4.5, there is another way to rethrow an exception that still keeps its stack trace, provided by the ExceptionDispatchInfo.Capture method:

void MyMethod()

{

    try

    {

        //do something that possibly throws an exception

    }

    catch (Exception ex)

    {

        DoSomethingWithThis(ex);

    }

}

void DoSomethingWithThis(Exception ex)

{

    //do something with ex

    var capture = ExceptionDispatchInfo.Capture(ex);    //works even if ex is null

    if (capture != null)

    {

        capture.Throw();    //call stack from MyMethod will be kept

    }

}

Not a substantial difference, but this gives us more control, which is usually good!