BRAINSTORM: return type of 'exception'

[Russell Lewis]

dsimcha wrote:
> I like the back-end compiler optimization part of this for void return types.
> However, I don't like the idea of making the programmer responsible for checking
> the error code.  The nice thing about exceptions is that if you don't handle an
> exception because you believe that it can't happen in your case, then you've
> basically got an assert, and if you were wrong and it CAN happen, you'll know
> about it fast.  They're also nice when you're writing a quick and dirty prototype,
> because the default behavior given bad input (such as a file that doesn't exist)
> is to fail in a reasonable way.  Realistically, in a throwaway prototype I would
> never bother to check error codes, and this would probably lead to some
> frustrating "bugs" that were really caused by bad input.

I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying.  What I'm 
suggesting is that when you call a function with return type 
"exception," the compiler would automatically check the return code for 
you, and auto-throw the exception if one is returned.  It's the syntax 
of exceptions, with the execution speed of return codes.