On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Peter Scott wrote (with >): [what is the purpose of having an explicit 'try'] > Well, for one, it makes it easier to see that a block is subject to > exception handling if all you have to do is look at the beginning for 'try' > rather than scan through it for a 'catch'. A good point. > And there's the issue Jonathan Scott Duff raised, which is that the > question of which catch blocks will be applied in what order is > non-obvious to the user, even though there may be a well-defined > interpretation. I disagree with this point. Catch blocks should simply be applied in the order written. If you have a "floating" catch block--i.e., one that isn't connected to anything that throws an exception--then you have some code that will never run. No big deal, and possibly useful as yet another option for Multi-Line-Comments. For example (I'm redoing this from memory, so forgive me if it's not exact): catch Baseball {A} Quarterback(); # throws FootBall catch Football {B} In this example, B would be called and A wouldn't. OTOH: catch Baseball {A} Pitcher(); # throws Baseball catch Football {B} A Baseball exception would be thrown but not caught. No problem. Dave