Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.sather Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!newsfeed.ACO.net!Austria.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!newsfeed.acns.nwu.edu!ftpbox!mothost!schbbs!news From: shang@corp.mot.com (David L. Shang) Subject: Re: What Should An Exception Handling Do? -- Clarification of rules Reply-To: shang@corp.mot.com Organization: MOTOROLA Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 13:48:00 GMT Message-ID: <1996Mar27.134800.18605@schbbs.mot.com> References: <4j948d$t3d@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de> Sender: news@schbbs.mot.com (SCHBBS News Account) Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.188.128.126 Lines: 27 Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.object:53293 comp.lang.eiffel:22535 comp.lang.c++:175307 comp.lang.beta:10685 comp.lang.java:29032 comp.lang.sather:12365 In article <4j948d$t3d@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de> mw@ipx2.rz.uni-mannheim.de (Marc Wachowitz) writes: > David L. Shang (shang@corp.mot.com) wrote: > > But an exception is not necessarily an error. Sometimes it is an > > condition that requires some extraordinary computation, a condition > > that is not supposed for a regular case, [...] > > Let's look at the problem with fresh eyes, without thinking immediately > about using the technical feature called "exception" in a few programming > languages. > > Some routine (often supposed to be reused for different contexts) wants > the "advice" of its caller (or the caller's caller etc.) how to handle an > unusual condition ("advice" might imply activities, like a user query). > Couldn't agree more. That is what an exception handling is supposed to do, and that is the case where exception handling is helpful. Back to my original post, I analyzed two cases for exception handling: * the callee decides how to handle the exception; and * the caller decides how to handle the exception; And I concluded that the second case is more important and useful. David Shang