Question/suggestion about exceptions

[Ary Manzana]

Graham St Jack wrote:
> Is there a way to automatically keep track of what exceptions may be 
> thrown by a function or method? Ideally, what I am looking for is 
> something like Java's "throws" keyword, but I would be happy with almost 
> anything.
> 
> It is way too hard to develop reliable code of any size that uses 
> exceptions extensively, because as things change, you lose track of what 
> exceptions are thrown from where. Some sort of compiler support would 
> make this a lot easier.
> 
> What I had in mind was an optional compiler warning and a new "throws" 
> keyword. The compiler would (optionally) issue a warning if a function 
> or method can throw an exception that it hasn't declared that it 
> "throws". With this assistance, it becomes is easy to keep track of what 
> can be thrown from where. Making it a warning and optional stops it from 
> breaking existing code, and makes quick code hacks easy to write still.
> 
> Thoughts?

I totally support this idea. Is it hard to implement in the compiler? Of 
course, there should also be a hierarchy of exceptions, just like Java: 
RuntimeException dosen't signal an error when not try-catching it.

Thoughts? :-)