C# Language Specification

Exceptions

Exceptions in C# provide a structured, uniform, and type-safe way of handling both system level and application level error conditions. The exception mechanism in C# is quite similar to that of C++, with a few important differences:

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  In C#, all exceptions must be represented by an instance of a class type derived from System.Exception. In C++, any value of any type can be used to represent an exception.
  
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  In C#, a finally block (§8.10) can be used to write termination code that executes in both normal execution and exceptional conditions. Such code is difficult to write in C++ without duplicating code.
  
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  In C#, system-level exceptions such as overflow, divide-by-zero, and null dereferences have well defined exception classes and are on a par with application-level error conditions.
  

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