On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Chouser <chou...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Jeffrey Straszheim
> <straszheimjeff...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Does the stuff in error kit work across thread boundaries.  I'm thinking,
>> for instance, if you run a computation using pmap, the individual
>> computations are run inside of Java futures, which will propagate exceptions
>> back to the caller when the caller gets the value.  So, pmap should work
>> fairly transparently with regard to Java exception semantics.  That is nice.
>
> That's a very interesting scenario, thanks for bringing it up.
>
>> Can the same be said for the error-kit stuff?
>
> Currently, no.  The problem is that though future propagates
> exceptions on the way out, it does not propagate dynamic binding
> context on the way in, which is what error-kit needs to do what it
> does.  Also, error-kit uses some thread-local data to pass information
> up the stack past frames that don't know about it.

I've got a solution or at least a sort of work-around for this.  As of
svn 530, error-kit provides a 'rebind-fn' function  You can pass it a
function definition and it will stuff the dynamic context needed by
error-kit (via lexicals) into the given fn and re-dynamically-bind
them there.  This along with some other adjustments to how error-kit
communicates with itself across stack frames allows for this:

  (with-handler
    (doall
      (pmap (rebind-fn
              #(if (< % 5)
                 %
                 (raise *error* "foo")))
            (range 10)))
    (handle *error* [msg]
      (str "caught " msg)))

That returns "caught foo".

The two key pieces there are the 'doall' and 'rebind-fn'.

Leaving out both the 'doall' and 'rebind-fn' would mean that pmap may
not raise the error until after leaving the dynamic scope of the
with-handler.  The 'raise' would not see the with-handler, and throw a
normal Java Exception, producing the same results as you'd get from
using try/catch in a similar way:

  java.lang.Exception: foo

Including the 'doall' but leaving out 'rebind-fn' would still prevent
'raise' from seeing that its inside a with-handler, and so would still
throw a normal Java Exception, which the with-handler would decline to
catch:

  java.lang.RuntimeException: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException:
java.lang.Exception: foo (NO_SOURCE_FILE:0)

Leaving out the 'doall' but including 'rebind-fn' produces the
strangest result.  The 'rebind-fn' would allow 'raise' to see the
with-handler context, but which would no longer be in place when the
'raise' actually executes.  This allows error-kit's internal exception
object to sneak out into the light of day:

  Error Kit Control Exception: default, {:args ("caught foo"), :hfunc
#<user$eval__1897$fn__1901 user$eval__1897$fn__1...@1a791f>, :blockid
G__1899, :htag clojure.contrib.error-kit/*error*, :rfunc
#<core$identity__3483 clojure.core$identity__3...@c3e967>}

Scary, right?  So don't do that.

If you correctly use 'rebind-fn' in contexts that are forced while
still within the appropriate with-handler context, you can use the
full power of error-kit, including continue, continue-with,
bind-continue, etc:

  (defn whine []
    (raise *error* "whine"))

  (with-handler
    (doall
      (pmap (rebind-fn
              #(with-handler
                 (if (< % 5) % (whine))
                 (bind-continue insert [x] x)))
            (range 10)))
    (handle *error* [msg]
      (continue insert (str "caught " msg))))

If anyone is still reading and has a better idea for how to get
try/catch and dynamic binding contexts to stay in sync, I'm all ears.

--Chouser

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