[m-users.] When is nondeterminism appropriate?

[Volker Wysk]

Am Dienstag, den 16.02.2021, 14:09 +1100 schrieb Zoltan Somogyi:
> 2021-02-15 23:40 GMT+11:00 "Volker Wysk" <post at volker-wysk.de>:
> > Am Sonntag, den 14.02.2021, 15:32 -0500 schrieb Philip White:
> > > :- type result ---> ok(T) ; error(string).
> > > 
> > > "functions that can fail" (either because of user error or something
> > > else) seems like the perfect time to use semidet, but if I
> > > want to have good error messages, then semidet will not help me, and I
> > > might as well try to make my function deterministic.
> > 
> > This might be a good opportunity for using exceptions.
> 
> One difference between those two approaches is that returning
> an error indication explicitly makes it significantly easier to return
> *more than one* error indication.
> 
> Consider the code in the Mercury compiler that parses a pragma
> that has several arguments (e.g. foreign_proc pragmas). It is possible
> for each argument to have one or more syntax errors inside it.
> We want the parser to print an error message for *each* syntax error,
> to allow programmers to fix N syntax error errors with one recompilation,
> instead of N recompilations.
> 
> The compiler uses a variant of the approach described by Philip,
> with the difference being that the error case describes not one error,
> but one or more errors. The code for parsing e.g. a foreign_proc pragma
> then just parses each argument, and then checks whether they all
> returned ok(...). If yes, it constructs the representation of the pragma
> from the arguments inside those ok()s, and wraps an ok() around it.
> If not, it appends error lists inside the error()s, and wraps another
> error() around the result. This code is simple and direct. I don't think
> I would say the same of code that tried to do this with exceptions.

In this case, when you want to aggregate the errors/error messages, this
might be the best way to do it.

But in Philip's case, I think exceptions would handle it more elegantly.
You'd have less clutter, and his functions/predicates could be
deterministic. And you'd jump to the appropriate catch handler, unwinding
the stack, and have even less clutter. It's what exceptions are there for.

Regards,
Volker
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.mercurylang.org/archives/users/attachments/20210216/504187e2/attachment.sig>