Exception handling within an Exception in C#

Question

i know this could be a little weird but a doubt is a doubt afterall... what would happen in the following situation...

private void SendMail()
{
    try
    {
        //i try to send a mail and it throws an exception
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        //so i will handle that exception over here
        //and since an exception occurred while sending a mail
        //i will log an event with the eventlog

        //All i want to know is what if an exception occurs here
        //while writing the error log, how should i handle it??
    }
}

Thank you.

Answer 1

I would personally wrap the call to write to event log with another try\catch statement.

However, ultimately it depends on what your specification is. If it is critical to the system that the failure is written to the event log then you should allow it to be thrown. However, based on your example, I doubt this is what you want to do.

Answer 2

You can simply catch errors in the error logging method. However I wouldn't personally do that, as broken error logging is a sign your application can't function at all.

private void SendMail()
{
    try
    {
        //i try to send a mail and it throws an exception
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        WriteToLog();
    }
}

private void WriteToLog()
{
    try
    {
        // Write to the Log
    }
    catch(Exception ex)
    {
        // Error Will Robinson
        // You should probably make this error catching specialized instead of pokeman error handling
    }
}

Answer 3

Each exception is caught only when inside a try-catch block. You could nest try-catch but is generally not a good idea.