Ah apparently I remembered it wrong. I thought it was int res = int.TryParse(s, 0); // 0 as the default if parsing fails Of course if there is no reasonable d

Ah apparently I remembered it wrong. I thought it was int res = int.TryParse(s, 0); // 0 as the default if parsing fails Of course if there is no reasonable default you should bubble the thing up anyway or handle it on the spot. But very often for input parsing there is sane default you can choose.