Re: Help Me Please :)

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, Robert A Duff wrote:
> "James S. Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> 
> > Have you ever used exceptions in C++? 
> 
> No.  The last time I used C++ (some years ago), most compilers did not
> support exceptions.  The closest I could get was reading about them in
> Stroustrup's book.  But I have used exceptions in other languages that
> define exceptions as first-class objects.
> 
> >...Very few people do.
> > The problem arises from the fact that exceptions are first class objects.
> 
> I don't understand this problem.  Perhaps you could give an example?  Is
> the problem you're talking about C++-specific, or are you claiming it's
> a fundamental problem with the idea of exceptions-as-objects?

I agree with Bob Duff here, in that I don't understand. When I was hacking 
Java, my complaint about the exception mechanism wasn't that you could 
throw objects, it was that you had to declare or catch all exceptions,
which causes lots of people to subclass from RuntimeException to avoid
this. But that's not the issue at hand.

I think exception types would be a good thing, but its way too late to fix 
that now, and it was probably too late for Ada 95. A future Ada-inspired 
language could fix this.

-- Brian