Google's Go & Exceptions

[Walter Bright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> bearophile wrote:
>>> In GCC there is also the "warn_unused_result" function attribute that
>>> raises a compile time warning if you don't use the return value of a
>>> function: 
>>
>> That may wind up suffering similar problems as checked exceptions do - 
>> just do a quick and dirty assign the return value to a hastily 
>> declared temp and ignore it, meaning to fix it later.
>>
>> Of course, it doesn't actually get fixed later. Even worse, during 
>> code reviews, it will look like the code is paying attention to the 
>> error code, but it won't be.
> 
> I'd think in a code review a variable assigned and subsequently never 
> used is bound to raise a red flag.

I agree, if it was noticed. For me,

    int result = foo();

in the code implies that 'result' is later used. I'd have to search to 
see if it wasn't, which is harder than noticing that:

    foo();

ignores the result.

This goes back to my theory that a feature that encourages the 
programmer to insert misleading dead code to shut the compiler up is a 
misfeature.