Peter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 09:36 AM 2/22/2001 +0000, David Grove wrote:
> >This is what's scaring me about all this talk about
> >exceptions... it can break this mold and make Perl into a "complainer
> >language" belching up uncaught (don't care) exceptions forcing
try/except
> >blocks around every piece of IO or DB handling. The style
> >
> >try {
> > open(FOO, "./foo");
> >}
> >catch FileOpenException $e {
> > die "Drat:" .$e->Message. "\n";
> >}
> >
> >is horrifying to me over the normal
> >
> >open(FOO, "./foo") or die "Drat:$!\n";
>
> Now steady on. No-one is proposing getting rid of the normal way of
doing
> it. We're just talking about beefing up another WTDI. There are
> situations
> in programs that have dozens or hundreds of lines of code which benefit
> from the exception model just as much as your example.
Actually, I have heard talk among us about eliminating $! and return
values from such functions as open(). This was likely extremicisit view
during the RFC's but the image stuck pretty hard.
Anyway, the point was that perl as a high level language isn't safe
because it's safe but because it makes decent assumptions. Bounds
checking, the example given, doesn't exist because there are no bounds...
at least not in a comparative sense. It has "no arbitrary limits" even if
you impose them yourself (well, in similar matters and with good
programming). The benefits of this particular high-level language are
often a redefinition of language concepts. Comparing Perl bounds checking
with "superior" bounds checking in C++ and (gack) VB is comparing apples
with a nectarine... or glued-together quartz flakes with a pearl.
p
