From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Subject: Re: [9fans] same functions everywhere
From: John Murdie <john@cs.york.ac.uk>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Cc: john@cs.york.ac.uk
In-Reply-To: <622b8580ff4fa7e12cb655bf19694fe8@vitanuova.com>
References: <622b8580ff4fa7e12cb655bf19694fe8@vitanuova.com>
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Date: Fri,  9 May 2003 17:19:42 +0100
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On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 14:21, rog@vitanuova.com wrote:
> DAGwyn@null.net:
> > when sizeof(char)==
> > sizeof(int) it is very likely that all-one bits is a valid
> > data value *as well as* the EOF marker
>
> don't most >8bit character encodings (including unicode) provide at
> least one code point to represent "not a character"?
>
> anyway, i'm not arguing about the design of getc.  maybe it should
> have been
>
> 	int getc(FILE *f, char *c);
>
> filling in the character at c iff it returns 1.  some of the plan 9
> rune(2) functions work in this kind of way.
>
> however, i would argue that using exceptions for such a thing would be
> fairly unwieldy, and end up obfuscating what should be plain,
> straightforward code.
>
> exceptions are surprising things: they do not facilitate linear
> reading of the code; they should be kept for genuinely surprising
> conditions.

And then what should one do? Suppose that a "genuinely surprising
condition" occurs when a launch vehicle is a few tens of seconds off the
ground; just what should the program do?

I agree with those here that hold the opinion that exceptions are no
substitute for a well-thought-out and well-notated program (we used to
call it "structured programming"). Need error handling obscure the
"all's well" logic of the program?

John A. Murdie
Department of Computer Science
University of York
UK