Re: Exceptions in Declarative Region

[seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1993Aug12.223413.20295@scf.loral.com> bashford@scf.loral.com (Dave 
Bashford) writes:
>In article ... rgilbert@orl.mmc.com writes:
>>The LRM (11-4.2a) specifies that exceptions that occur in the
>>decarative portion are propagated up to the calling procedure
>>and not handled by the current function's exception handler.
>>
>>Can somebody provide the rationale for this?  Why shouldn't the
>>exception handler for a procedure/function not include the
>>declarative portion?
>>
>>                           Bob 
>
>And a related question: How does a program handle exceptions raised
>in the elaboration of global packages and main procedures ?

It doesn't and can't. The LRM is quite clear on this one: "the main
program is abandoned," i.e. crashes. How can Main even get started if
the context created by its own declarations and the packages its WITHs
can't be set up? Better to just crash Main. The alternative is much worse.

I doubt that any language with a block structure could do better.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"We just changed our CONFIG.SYS, then pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL. It was easy."
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