Re: Necessity of multi-level error propogation
On 11 Mar., 05:48, "Tony" <t...@my.net> wrote:
"James Kanze" <james.ka...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a424a178-11ba-415c-b344-489b571dac9c@e38g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
On Mar 10, 5:08 am, "Tony" <t...@my.net> wrote:
In lieu of other techniques, avoiding exceptions may indeed be
"stupid". However, given robust replacement techniques, the
opposite may be true: using exceptions would be stupid.
The only know alternative to exceptions is return codes: comparing
these two alternatives, exceptions come out as the big winner in every
case where the errorhandling will not take place right after the
call.
[snipping a comment by James Kanze that looks as it came from you: you
really should setup your newsreader to perform proper quoting]
I don't know what you mean by "religious reasons". I would hope that all
developers do things out of practicality. If the goal was to see what
alternatives develop (read, R&D), banning exception use would be not stup=
id,
but facilitating. "Double blind" experiment or similar.
I think I was pondering doing an alternative to exceptions on
a 'substantial" project when I posted the OP and was hoping
for more insight as to where it would come back and bite me or
haunt me.
"Anytime you can't reasonable handle the error in the immediately
calling function. "
I don't see that as a rule of thumb anymore since error codes can be
reliably propogated up the stack pretty easily without "jumping and
introducing alternative unwind mechanisms".
This is a very fragile method, that takes considerable effort by the
programmers. It also heavily increases complexity of the program,
causing everything related to programming (reviewing, testing... )
much more difficult.
Yes, constructors and overloaded operators MAY be an issue. But maybe tha=
t's
just a matter of coding style: if you choose to architect software using
RAII as a (or THE) design construct, then you will constantly be trying t=
o
catch exceptions from constructors. It may be one of those "if it hurts w=
hen
you do that, don't do that" things.
No you do not. When you use exceptions, you catch where you handle
error conditions, and nowhere else. Nothing hurts.
/Peter