From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Lucio De Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] same functions everywhere
Message-ID: <20030507124006.D26796@cackle.proxima.alt.za>
References: <20030501160047.7231.qmail@g.bio.cse.psu.edu> <000c01c3147c$c7665ae0$7b83773e@SOMA> <3EB8E817.4090609@ameritech.net>
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In-Reply-To: <3EB8E817.4090609@ameritech.net>; from northern snowfall on Wed, May 07, 2003 at 06:03:51AM -0500
Date: Wed,  7 May 2003 12:40:09 +0200
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On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 06:03:51AM -0500, northern snowfall wrote:

> Exceptions in a C environment is basically admitting that you
> don't understand enough about C to promote elegant and simple
> solutions to complex problems in that language. Putting the
> blame on C, itself, is simplistic and, frankly, arrogant.

I don't go along with that.  Consider the conventional linear search
of an array:

	int a[100];
	int x, v;

	...

	x = 0;
	while (x < 100 && a[x] != v) {
		++x;
	}

(or whatever version you prefer).

At the end, you always have to determine whether you found the
desired element or exceeded the array bounds.  Now, if exceeding
the array bounds could be treated as an exception (imagine a clever
CPU with array bounds checking in hardware delivering a segment
violation error), you could write:

	x = 0;
	while (a[x] != v) {
		++x;
	}

and at the end you'd know that the element was found, because the
exception wasn't triggered.  Better, you'd not even reach the end
of the loop if the element wasn't found.

This particular problem has bugged me for decades :-)  I go along
with Doug that exception handling can hide the extremely uninteresting
code involved in dealing with rare or "off band" conditions.

++L