On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 17:42, George Schlossnagle wrote:
> On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 11:30 AM, Sebastian Bergmann wrote:
>
> > Marcus Börger wrote:
> >> try {
> >> // code
> >> }
> >> catch (class1 $var) {
> >> }
> >> catch (class2 $var) {
> >> }
> >> catch ($var) {
> >> }
> >
> > I thought that only objects of the Exception class and subclasses
> > thereof can be throw().
> >
>
> Forcing all thrown objects to be subclassed from Exception does not
> feel very PHP-ish.
Indeed. In fact, Exception is not even meant for this purpose, Marcus
is talking about a different construct (although perhaps he wants the
same functionality as the Exception class provides).
Having a base Exception class provides a gentleman's catch-all. This
means you can throw errors that explicitly bypass the catch-all
exception. This is useful for example if we decided to throw
"InternalException" which would be an exception thrown by PHP internal
functions. InternalException could only be explicitly caught, and you
could still allow for generic exception handling through the Exception
base class...
In general all classes should respect exception (which, btw, is why we
should stick with studlyCaps naming - compatibility with PEAR), except
for when you need to explicitly avoid the catch all.
I don't think adding a generic catch is a good thing, it will lead to
spaghetti code, and a large WTF factor when dealing with libraries that
take advantage of the fact that the Base Exception class is not a
catch-all :: end-all.
-Sterling
--
The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with
judiciously placed print statements.
- Brian W Kernighan, 1978
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