catch without block/scope brackets

[Jarrett Billingsley]

"Jakob" <a at b.com> wrote in message news:fbjmcu$68k$2 at digitalmars.com...
> IMHO, the compiler should parse the second piece of code in the same 
> manner as the first piece, since there are (as in the first example) no 
> brackets after the catch keyword defining an object to catch. Right?
>

I've thought about this as well, and I think it's because allowing a 
statement without braces there would introduce an ambiguity:

try
    foo();
catch
    (bar).baz();

Parenthesized expressions are allowed to come at the beginning of 
expressions, and therefore at the beginning of statements.  So the compiler 
would parse the catch block in this case as "catch(bar", thinking that "bar" 
is the type of a catch specialization, and then expect an identifier after 
"bar".

Thankfully there's no ambiguity when you _do_ specify an exception 
specialization:

try
    foo();
catch(Object ex)
    fwritefln(stderr, "An error happened. %s", ex.toString());