JavaScript: Try/Catch - what am I doing wrong here?

Question

I am wrapping my code into try/catch blocks and I decided to test it out to see how it works. Below is a simple snippet of code that will generate a Syntax Error - trigge rHandler

try{
    $(document).trigge rHandler('fbload');
}catch(e){
     alert(e);
}

However I'm not getting the alert! Instead the error is logged in the console as an Unhandled Syntax Error. I was expecting that any error that is generated inside the Try block will automatically be passed down into the Catch section where I can do anything I want with it? Why does this not appear to be working?

Answer 1

try..catch will catch exceptions which occur at runtime. But Syntax errors occur during parsing time itself. So, when the code

$(document).trigge rHandler('fbload');

is encountered, JavaScript tries to parse the expression. But it couldn't. So it is clueless and fails immediately with SyntaxError and that is why it is not caught by the except block.