eric's code refactored

gistfile1.txt

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;

namespace ConsoleApplication3
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

        }

        public static string Test(WebRequest request)
        {
            try
            {
                var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
                return ReadResponse(response);
            }
            catch (WebException ex)
            {
                if (ex.Response != null)
                    System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(ReadResponse(ex.Response));

                if (ex.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError && ex.Response != null)
                {
                    WebResponse r = ex.Response;

                    System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Status: " + ex.Status);

                    HttpWebResponse resp = (HttpWebResponse)r;
                    switch (resp.StatusCode)
                    {
                        case HttpStatusCode.NotFound:
                            return null;
                        //etc, etc, you can add all the codes here and rethrow or do something useful :)
                        default:
                            //much testing it seems that the WebResponse generated for the
                            //exception does not contain the body (yet preserves the content length field, as
                            //a teaser i suppose ;)). So unfortunately this part will always return null.

                            System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("StatusCode: " + resp.StatusCode);
                            return ReadResponse(resp);
                    }
                }
            }

            return null;
        }

        private static string ReadResponse(WebResponse resp)
        {
            using (Stream stream = resp.GetResponseStream())
            {
                return new StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd();
            }
        }
    }
}