Exception.ToString returns a representation of the current exception that is intended to be understood by humans. Where the exception contains culture-sensitive data, the string representation returned by ToString is required to take into account the current system culture. Although there are no exact requirements for the format of the returned string, it should attempt to reflect the value of the object as perceived by the user.

The default implementation of Exception.ToString obtains the name of the class that threw the current exception, the message, the result of calling Exception.ToString on the inner exception, and the result of calling Environment.StackTrace. If any of these members is null, its value is not included in the returned string.

If there is no error message or if it is an empty string (""), then no error message is returned. The name of the inner exception and the stack trace are returned only if they are not null.

This method overrides object.ToString.

The following example causes an Exception and displays the result of calling Exception.ToString on that Exception.

using System;
public class MyClass {}
public class ArgExceptionExample {
 public static void Main() {
 MyClass my = new MyClass();
 string s = "sometext";
 try {
 int i = s.CompareTo(my);
 }
 catch (Exception e) {
 Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}",e.ToString());
 }
 }
}
   

The output is

Error: System.ArgumentException: Object must be of type String.
   at System.String.CompareTo(Object value)
   at ArgExceptionExample.Main()