Handling exceptions
You’ve seen several scenarios where errors have occurred when converting types. Some languages return error codes when something goes wrong. .NET uses exceptions that are richer and designed only for failure reporting. When this happens, we say a runtime exception has been thrown.
Other systems might use return values that could have multiple uses. For example, if the return value is a positive number, it might represent the count of rows in a table, or if the return value is a negative number it might represent some error code.
When an exception is thrown, the thread is suspended and if the calling code has defined a try-catch
statement, then it is given a chance to handle the exception. If the current method does not handle it, then its calling method is given a chance, and so on up the call stack.
As you have seen, the default behavior of a console app or a .NET Interactive notebook is to output a message about the exception, including a...