Re: best practice: error handling

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Tue, 31 May 2011 22:02:42 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> Again, the point is valid, but the example is not good. Zero index is as
> good as Index_Result. In both cases an attempt to use the index will  
> cause
> an exception. So both return an "invalid index."
Disagree: an index is an index, not an error status; otherwise this is a  
kind of special-value as special-meaning (a special meaning which outside  
of the normal type semantic area). My experience says its dangerous,  
because it is always hard to read that either -1 or 0 or who know what,  
was intended to mean Error. Chance are that many people will read 0 as  
meaning “Index 0”.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]