[m-dev.] Re: exceptions

[Fergus Henderson]

On 08-Oct-1999, Ralph Becket <rbeck at microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
> > The additional complexity of declaring which exceptions may be thrown
> > doesn't seem worth the benefits, IMHO.  
> 
> I have to disagree here.  In fact I've just been to a talk where it was
> mentioned that some years ago a team from Acorn (remember them?) started
> work on a new OS in Modula 2+.

Does Modula 2+ have parametric polymorphism or higher-order procedures?
The additional complexity of declaring exceptions is
a bit higher in the presence of these features.

I'm not totally opposed to the idea of declaring exceptions.
Certainly for safety-critical software, it's probably worthwhile.
But in many cases I think the disadvantages will outweigh the
advantages.

I'd be happy for Mercury to have compiler-checked declarations of which
exceptions a predicate would throw, so long as they were (by default)
optional.  But it's not at all high on my personal list of priorities.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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