Re: Exceptions vs. if-then-else

[jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter)]

>I don't know of any machine nor compiler which guarrantees that an Ada
>statement is non-interruptible. Some machines don't even guarantee that
>a decrement memory location machine instruction is atomic.

Mea culpa--my apologies to the N people who beat me about the
head and shoulders for this one. Yes, absolutely right--statements
are not necessarily atomic. I obviously need to get more sleep!

So, my argument in favor of the exception version of the Pop operation
comes down to this: I think you should use exceptions whenever they
are not part of the NORMAL flow of control. Of course, this is an
inherently subjective criterion, but ask yourself this--is it NORMAL
for a client to Pop an empty stack? I think not, so I think writing
Pop without a pre-check is fine.

--
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