Avoiding try-catch by using tryparse instead of parse

Question

In a lot of places in my code I have this:

try
{
    price = double.Parse(sPrice.Replace(",", "."), CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}
catch
{
    price  = 0;
}

I read somewhere that if the exception is thrown in the try block, it takes a lot of time being caught.

So, I'd like to use tryparse instead of parse, like this:

if (!double.TryParse(sPrice, out price))
{
     price  = 0;
}

Is this a good practice? Will it take less time?

You could benchmark it yourself. As for good practice, well. That's entirely subjective but I prefer tryparse-methods, myself. =) — J. Steen
– J. Steen, Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 9:27
You should only do this if failure is expected to happen sometimes, e.g. when parsing user-typed text. You should not do this when parsing stuff which is supposed to be correct. Otherwise you are hiding errors. — Matthew Watson
– Matthew Watson, Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 9:31

Zdeslav Vojkovic · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-05 09:33:52Z

3

Yes, TryParse is faster.

However, this smells like a premature optimization to me, unless you expect Parse to be called in a tight loop with many invalid input strings.

You should choose not depending on speed but depending on requirements and what kind of data you expect to get. Also, consider another option: Convert.ToDouble

answered Mar 5, 2013 at 9:33

Zdeslav Vojkovic

14.7k37 silver badges45 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

petko_stankoski Over a year ago

How do you mean premature optimization?

Zdeslav Vojkovic Over a year ago

How do you know it is too slow? :) In most cases, overhead introduced by exception handling is negligible compared to rest of the processing so it makes no sense to optimize the code for speed. The readability/ease of maintenance are quite often better optimization goals, IMO.

Pawan Nogariya · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-05 09:33:11Z

1

Two benefits I feel of using TryParse

It is fast as compared to try.. catch...
You will always have value in your variable, either the one you want to assign or the default one. So you can use your variable directly once it is passed to TryParse

answered Mar 5, 2013 at 9:33

Pawan Nogariya

9,04614 gold badges61 silver badges137 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Avoiding try-catch by using tryparse instead of parse

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related