C# 7 Throw Expressions

In your application, when an unexpected runtime error arises due to a violation of system or application constraint or a condition that is not expected to occur during normal execution of the program, then it will throw an exception, and you will need to provide a catch block to catch that exception.

• In C# 7.0, a new feature Throw Expressions is introduced allowing you to throw exceptions from conditional expressions, null-coalescing expressions, and most importantly, with expression-bodied members.
• Before C# 7, the throw was just a statement, but now it can be used within the code body because it now works as an expression.

Starting with C# 7.0, the throw can be used as an expression as well as a statement. The following example uses a throw expression to throw an ArgumentException if a method is passed an empty string array.

private static void DisplayFirstNumber(string[] numbers)
{
    string arg = numbers.Length >= 1 ? numbers[0] : throw new ArgumentException("You must supply an argument");

    if (int.TryParse(arg, out var number))
        Console.WriteLine("You entered {0}", number);
    else
        Console.WriteLine("{0} is not a number.", arg);
}

public static void Example1()
{
    DisplayFirstNumber(new string[] { "3", "6", "12" });    // You entered 3
    DisplayFirstNumber(new string[] { "a", "6", "12" });    // a is not a number.
    DisplayFirstNumber(new string[] { });                   // System.ArgumentException: 'You must supply an argument'
}

Before C# 7.0, this logic would need to appear in an if/else statement as shown below.

private static void DisplayFirstNumber(string[] numbers)
{
    string arg = "";
    if (numbers.Length >= 1)
        arg = numbers[0];
    else
        throw new ArgumentException("You must supply an argument");

    if (int.TryParse(arg, out var number))
        Console.WriteLine("You entered {0}", number);
    else
        Console.WriteLine("{0} is not a number.", arg);
}

You can also use a null-coalescing operator to throw an exception as shown in the below example.

class Customer
{
    private string name;
    public string Name
    {
        get => name;
        set => name = value ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(paramName: nameof(value), message: "Name cannot be null");
    }
}

public static void Example2()
{
    Customer customer = new Customer();
    customer.Name = null;
}

A throw expression throws the value produced by evaluating the null_coalescing_expression, which must denote a value of the class type System.Exception, or of a class type that derives from System.Exception.