The Right Approach to Exceptions

[Timon Gehr]

On 02/19/2012 05:00 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 2/19/12 3:17 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> "As much information as possible" is way more than a transient
>> property. If my
>> code is going to retry or do something else or give up, it needs enough
>> information to know what went wrong, not just whether the function
>> which was
>> called think it might work on a second try.
>>
>> Having an exception hierarchy provides some of that information simply
>> with
>> the types, and makes it easier to organize code based on what went
>> wrong (e.g.
>> separate catch blocks for each type of exception). And having that
>> hierarchy
>> also means that the derived types can have additional information
>> beyond their
>> type which could be useful but is specific to that problem and so
>> wouldn't make
>> sense on a general exception type.
>>
>> I really don't see what transient buys you in comparison to that.
>
> A notion of transiency planted fundamentally in all exceptions allows
> one to act on it regardless of origin and hierarchy.
>
> Andrei
>

Transiency is a powerful concept at the handler side, but the interface 
it is difficult to fulfil at the point where the actual error occurs. 
What is important is probably not whether or not transiency is useful if 
it is there, but more whether or not a sufficient part of the useful 
exceptions are naturally transient. This is what I doubt. OTOH, as I 
understand it, introducing the concept would require additional 
boilerplate in most exception handlers.