From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM
	autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,98c463a9e98cfdf5
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-13 07:36:05 PST
Path: 
 archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!spool0902.news.uu.net!not-for-mail
Message-ID: <3D08ADF9.7040104@mail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 10:36:41 -0400
From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada exceptions. unchecked?
References: <8db3d6c8.0206112300.3965a62b@posting.google.com>
 <FxOlM5HK5mpC@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3D0750F1.7A12342@raytheon.com>
 <$4ctS45vG2pB@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3D0771D3.FFEA1AA4@san.rr.com>
 <dstanbro-E28877.08195613062002@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Organization: KBC Financial Products
Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@mosquito.nyc.kbcfp.com
X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10
X-Trace: 1023978964  8954 204.253.250.10
Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:25870
Date: 2002-06-13T10:36:41-04:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Dale Stanbrough wrote:
> For example I have a convenience generic to iterate over each line
> of a file - you pass a procedure that does the work on each line.
> Clearly the generic can't know what exceptions the procedure could
> generate.

Same problem in C++. Except for throwing nothing, C++ experts
have come to the conclusion that exception specifications are
useless.

I think they're also misguided. The point of using exceptions
for signalling errors is to communicate information between the
point where the error happens and the point at which someone is
ready to deal with it. The path in between is traversed quietly,
with destructors (or Controlled objects) handling the cleanup of
resources as scopes are closed down. There is no reason for code
along the path to have to explicitly mention everything that can
possibly pass through it.