An exception is a situation where the computer can’t proceed with a normal flow of commands.
A common example is a division by zero. The result of this operation is not defined. In statistics a concept of a missing value is introduced, and we normally don’t bother about the process. We know the result of X divided by zero ;will be a missing.

In C# division by zero will cause the program to abort with an exception. The programmer can envelop the risky code into a wrapper, similar to how you capture { } a certain code in Stata. In Survey Solutions we always do this behind the scenes for the users, so when an exception occurs:

• In enabling condition the question is considered disabled, and
• In validation condition the answer is considered invalid.

To prevent an exception from happening you can use the logical conditions.For example, instead of writing

income/numpersons>1000

one can write:

(numpersons>0) && (income/numpersons>1000)

if numpersons is equal to zero, then the software will not continue evaluating the remainder of the expression as the result is automatically false. It matters especially in case where the conditions get more complicated:

(income/numpersons<1000) || (ispoor==true)

Here, if an exception occurs during the evaluation of the first part of the expression, the second doesn’t get evaluated. But, if we rewrite:  

((numpersons>0) && (income/numpersons<1000)) || (ispoor==true)

the second part of the expression will be evaluated in case numpersons is zero.