\Exception doesn't work for me but I found a solution.

I needed to replace:

  try {
   ...
  } catch(Exception $e){
   ...
  } 

by

  try {
   ...
  } catch(Throwable $e){
   ...
  }.

For more information : https://trowski.com/2015/06/24/throwable-exceptions-and-errors-in-php7/

If you are using PHP 7, you may need Throwable instead of Exception

My initial though is you have a typo in the name of the exception you are catching/throwing, but if your code is exactly the same I'm not sure exactly what is going on.

Try the following modification of the original script, and paste your results. It will help diagnose your issue a bit better.

<?php

//set up exception handler to report what we didn't catch
function exception_handler($exception) {

    if($exception instanceof MyException) {
        echo "you didn't catch a myexception instance\n";

    } else if($exception instanceof Exception) {
        echo "you didn't catch a exception instance\n";

    } else {
        echo "uncaught exception of type: ".gettype($exception)."\n";
    }

    echo "Uncaught exception: " , $exception->getMessage(), "\n";
}

//install the handler
set_exception_handler('exception_handler');

class MyException extends Exception {
}

function inverse($x) {
    if (!$x) {
        throw new MyException('Division by zero.');
    }
    else return 1/$x;
}

try {
    echo inverse(5) . "\n";
    echo inverse(0) . "\n";
} catch (MyException $e) {
    echo 'Caught myexception: ',  $e->getMessage(), "\n";
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'Caught exception: ',  $e->getMessage(), "\n";
}

// Continue execution
echo 'Hello World';
?>

In my case, a weird situation occurred and catching Exception didn't work even when I had \Exception. Here is what to do to make sure that you never miss anything and always catch the error.

 catch (\Exception $e) {
        // do what you want to do on exception catching
 } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        // do what you want to do on exception catching 
 }

When you combine these two, you will never miss catching an Exception. Make sure to put the \ before Exception and Throwable. That's important.

Edit An efficient way to catch them would be this

catch (\Exception|\Throwable $e) {
    // do what you want
}

This will catch that without you having two separate catch blocks

I had the same problem with following configurations,

PHP 5.2.14 (cli) (built: Aug 12 2010 17:32:30) Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies with eAccelerator v0.9.5.1, Copyright (c) 2004-2006 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator

The solution is to either disable eAccelerator or update it. I tried both and both of the fixes worked. The bug is reported here https://eaccelerator.net/ticket/242 (NB. firefox complains about their SSL cert) .

Now I am running try catch properly with following configurations,

PHP 5.2.4 (cli) (built: Oct 16 2007 09:13:35) Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies with eAccelerator v0.9.6.1, Copyright (c) 2004-2010 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator

catch all exception in php

 try
 {
   //place code
   throw new Exception('foo');//eg
 }
  catch (\Throwable $e) 
 { 
   dd('for php 7');
 } catch (\Exception $e) 
 { 
    dd('for php 5');
 }

https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.exceptions.php

TLDR; make sure you have use Exception; on the top of both php files

Maybe try disabling certain 3rd party extensions you might have installed? http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=41744

I am experiencing this as well. I read comment from Rowinson Gallego which state Exception must be thrown. So I modified my code from :

try
{
  $number = 5/0; //or other exception
}
catch(Exception $e)
{
  throw $e;
}

into :

try
{
  $number = 5/0; //or other exception
}
catch(Exception $e)
{
  throw new Exception($e->getMessage(),$e->getCode());
}

It works.

Try to add a backslash before the class for example:

BEFORE

try {
    if ($this->customerAuth->authenticate($customerId, $password)) {
        $this->session->loginById($customerId);
    }
} catch(Magento\Framework\Exception\State\UserLockedException $e) {
    return $this->respondWithCode('login', 401);
} catch (Magento\Framework\Exception\InvalidEmailOrPasswordException $e) {
    return $this->respondWithCode('login', 401);
}

AFTER

try {
    if ($this->customerAuth->authenticate($customerId, $password)) {
        $this->session->loginById($customerId);
    }
} catch(\Magento\Framework\Exception\State\UserLockedException $e) {
    return $this->respondWithCode('login', 401);
} catch (\Magento\Framework\Exception\InvalidEmailOrPasswordException $e) {
    return $this->respondWithCode('login', 401);
}

Again this old thread revisited...

I had not require_once'd the file containing my Exception subclass in the file with the try/catch block.

Somehow (maybe due to composer's autoload) this didn't result in a 'cannot be resolved to a type' error. And somehow my exception was being created with the expected namespace (in yet another file without the require_once). But it wasn't caught. My directory structure does not match the namespaces so autoload might have loaded the correct class in the file with the try/catch but under a different namespace.