The Right Approach to Exceptions

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/21/12 8:38 AM, foobar wrote:
> On Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 14:13:55 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 2/21/12 4:48 AM, foobar wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 02:23:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> On 2/20/12 7:02 PM, Juan Manuel Cabo wrote:
>>>>> oops, sorry!! I just saw a post by someone named Jose. My thousand
>>>>> apollogies!!
>>>>
>>>> I got confused. It was your argument I meant to refer to - adding info
>>>> to the exception in flight.
>>>>
>>>> Andrei
>>>
>>> I'd implement this along these lines:
>>>
>>> class WithErrorCode(E) : E {
>>> int errorCode;
>>> this(Args)(int err, Args args) { this.errorCode = err; super(args); }
>>> }
>>>
>>> and add this wrapper where relevant. e.g. replace:
>>> throw new FileNotFoundException(...);
>>> with something like:
>>> throw new WithErrorCode!FileNotFoundException(-1, ...);
>>>
>>> This is a localized change that doesn't affect all uses of exceptions
>>> and it remains type-safe. surely this is a better solution than the hash
>>> table?
>>
>> The two approaches don't compete as one is static and the other is
>> dynamic. For example, how does one add contextual information "While
>> opening table in {database}" to the current exception of type
>> WithErrorCode!FileNotFoundException?
>>
>>
>> Andrei
>
> This works:
> // note: the int parameter above isn't static
> dbConn.query("select age from people where id='foobar'");
> throw new WithErrorCode!FileNotFoundException(
> db.rs.getValue(1), "file not found");

I don't understand this example.

> This approach fails if you don't know ahead of time what *fields* you
> want to add to your exception but I'd argue that this is unrealistic. An
> exception is thrown as a response to a specific erroneous condition
> which means you already know *what* the problem is and what kind of data
> is needed to describe it.
>
> Can you offer a real world use-case where the above isn't sufficient?

This has been discussed. A function would want to add contextual 
information to an exception and rethrow it. Requiring a new type for 
each such flow does not scale.


Andrei