help with tryCatch

Could smb please help with try-catch encapsulating a function for
downloading. Let's say I have a character vector of symbols and want to
download each one and surround by try and catch to be safe

# get.hist.quote() is in library(tseries), but the question does not
depend on it, I could be sourcing local files instead

ans=null;error=null;
for ( sym in sym.vec){
try(ans=cbind(ans,get.hist.quote(sym,start=start))) #accumulate in a zoo
matrix
catch(theurlerror){error=c(error,sym)} #accumulate failed symbols
}

I know the code above does not work, but it conveys the idea. tryCatch
help page says it is similar to Java try-catch, but I know how to do a
try-catch in Java and still can't do it in R.

Thank you very much.
stephen