Should NullRefs ever be caught?

Question

I recently made the statement to a colleague that:

NullReferenceExceptions should never be explicitly caught

I used the word never.... hmmm. I've never seen a appropriate use case myself for catching them but I wanted to check if anyone else has?

Never is such a strong word after all.....

Answer 1

It depends on why; see Eric Lippert's blog entry. If they are "boneheaded exceptions", then no - just fix the calling code. In the rare case that they are "vexing exceptions" (i.e. the code you are calling has traps that are hard to avoid), then I guess you'd have to.