PHP RFC: Catching Multiple Exception Types

• Version: 1.0
• Date: 2016-03-06
• Author: Pierrick Charron, pierrick@php.net, Bronisław Białek after89@gmail.com
• Status: Draft
• First Published at: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/multiple-catch

It is sometime required to duplicate code of a catch statement because two totally different types of Exceptions are handled the same way.

<?php
 
try {
   // Some code...
} catch (ExceptionType1 $e) {
   // Code to handle the exception
} catch (ExceptionType2 $e) {
   // Same code to handle the exception
} catch (\Exception $e) {
   // ...
}

This RFC introduce the possibility to catch multiple exceptions type in a single catch statement. It will avoid code duplication when similar code is reused across multiple exception types. The same thing could be done by implementing a common interface for ExceptionType1 and ExceptionType2 but you don't always have the control on exceptions structure if you're using external code.

<?php
 
try {
   // Some code...
} catch (ExceptionType1 | ExceptionType2 $e) {
   // Code to handle the exception
} catch (\Exception $e) {
   // ...
}

This syntax and functionality is compatible with the Union RFC proposed here : https://wiki.php.net/rfc/union_types

None.

7.1

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Patch : https://github.com/php/php-src/compare/master...adoy:multiple-catch