Is there any reason to throw a DivideByZeroException?

Question

Are there any cases when it's a good idea to throw errors that can be avoided?

I'm thinking specifically of the DivideByZeroException and ArgumentNullException

For example:

double numerator = 10; double denominator = getDenominator();  if( denominator == 0 ){    throw new DivideByZeroException("You can't divide by Zero!"); } 

Are there any reasons for throwing an error like this?

NOTE: I'm not talking about catching these errors, but specifically in knowing if there are ever good reasons for throwing them.

JUST TO REITERATE:

I KNOW that in the example I gave you'd probably be better off handling the error. Perhaps the question should be rephrased. Are there any reasons to throw one of these errors instead of handling it at this location.

Answer 1

Let's say you write a library to work with really big integers that don't fit into Int64, then you might want to throw DivideByZeroException for the division algorithm you write.

Answer 2

The .NET runtime is already very good at throwing these exceptions. They are also highly descriptive of what is wrong, you can't add any good commentary to the exception message. "You can't divide by zero" adds no value.

However, you can avoid many of these exceptions by screening the values passed by the client code. You'll want ArgumentNullException with the name of argument if the client code passed a null, ArgumentException when it passed something that is liable to trip DivideByZero.