Path: news.cs.au.dk!news.net.uni-c.dk!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!skynet.be!poster!not-for-mail From: Atle Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: Static vs. dynamic exceptions Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 12:28:51 -0100 Organization: Belgacom Skynet SA/NV Lines: 27 Message-ID: <394F7193.544F988B@skynet.be> References: <20000619173848.8485.qmail@noatun.mjolner.dk> <8im02p$8s5j$1@xinwen.cs.au.dk> <8infta$9jn7$1@xinwen.cs.au.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialup382.charleroi.skynet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news0.skynet.be 961496651 28372 194.78.239.62 (20 Jun 2000 10:24:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@skynet.be NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Jun 2000 10:24:11 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: news.cs.au.dk comp.lang.beta:12453 "Jørgen Lindskov Knudsen" wrote: > > However, whether static and dynamic ex.handling is a choice between models, > or both are needed is an open question right now - actually this very > subject was discussed at the Workshop on Exception Handling at the > ECOOP'2002 conference last week. Currently, my conception is that both > mechanisms have their merit (for slightly different purposes), perhaps > warrenting having both (actually a very preliminary design exists for BETA). I find the try-catch blocks frightening, so I would say it in a more restrictive way: Application-related exceptions should be static (for as much as i now understand the term) in that an application programmer should know where his program 'has been' at all times. I think dynamic exceptions (in the 'traditional' sense) belong to the system, and should be restricted to situations where there is no other way. It cannot be wrong to think of these as an extension of the processor interrupt mechanisms: Writing to read-only memory (reading from write-only memory :-) Violating system security Interrupts shouldn't be part of an application's program flow - even though a desk clerk or receptionist work in a way that could very well be modelled by interrupts. I cannot give a good argument for this, though. I will be looking for you to do that :-) Atle