Syntax error stops the execution of script!!!

[cmorel]

Hello everybody!
There is something I still not understand in the way the DB engine works.

I have the following query, which purposefully contains an error:

declare @mystr nvarchar(3); set @mystr = 'C01'; declare @myint int; set @myint = @mystr;

Obviously, you cannot assign the string 'C01' to variable of type int! This is a syntax error:

Server: Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Syntax error converting the nvarchar value 'C01' to a column of data type int.

If I embed that query in a string variable and call the sp_executesql procedure to process it or just use the EXEC statement, the error will be raised but the execution of query will stop neat, so that I won't be able to test the result of the call.

Here is my script:

	declare @myquery nvarchar(4000);
	set @myquery = 'declare @mystr nvarchar(3); set @mystr = ''C01''; declare @myint int; set @myint = @mystr;';
	exec sp_executesql @myquery;
	if @@ERROR <> 0
	begin
		print 'failed.'
	end
	else
	begin
		print 'done';
	end

For instance, if you run this script in query analyzer, no message gets printed at all in query analyzer

This seems to happen only with syntax errors.

How can I avoid this situation????

Thanks a lot.