+1
The overwhelming standard practice is to use a plausible exception type
(such as some form of IllegalArgumentException) with a message.
On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Phil Steitz <phil.ste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I hate to open this can of worms again, but the following is just
> too painful for me to ignore. From recent mods to
> BinomialConfidenceInterval javadoc:
>
> * @throws NumberIsTooLargeException if {@code numberOfSuccesses
> > numberOfTrials}.
>
> The "NumberIsTooLarge" exception adds exactly zero to what would be
> more natural - just throw MathIAE. Fortunately, the message is at
> least still there in the code:
>
> if (numberOfSuccesses > numberOfTrials) {
> throw new
>
> NumberIsTooLargeException(LocalizedFormats.NUMBER_OF_SUCCESS_LARGER_THAN_POPULATION_SIZE,
> numberOfSuccesses,
> numberOfTrials, true);
> }
>
> The "NumberIsTooLarge" is ridiculous. What number? Why isn't the
> second number "too small?" If we really are going insist on
> defining and advertising lots of little subexceptions to MathIAE, we
> need to define appropriate ones, or just leave MathIAE. My vote is
> to just allow throwing MathIAE with a descriptive message. If we
> insist on adding subexceptions for everything, in this case, we need
> something like
>
> SubsetSizeException
>
> and in another set of changes that I am about to commit that will
> end up similarly mangled, I will need
>
> InsufficientDataException
>
> I would like to get full community input on this topic for once and
> for all and either add a slew of new exceptions so what we throw is
> meaningful in the context of the caller, or just allow MathIAE to be
> thrown directly.
>
> So please all be brief and specify your preference for one of the
> two options below:
>
> 0) allow MathIAE to be thrown directly with an informative message
>
> 1) define caller-meaningful exceptions for situations such as
> insufficient data, invalid subset size, invalid probability, invalid
> interval, ...
>
> I would much prefer 0), but if consensus is 1), I will start adding
> exceptions so what we throw is meaningful and open a ticket to clean
> up for 4.0.
>
> Phil
>
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