From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: , <20030911190427.A2507@cackle.proxima.alt.za> Subject: Re: [9fans] ... in the Kingdom of Sources Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 09:18:33 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 3229db1c-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Lucio De Re wrote: > I think Doug's concerns, like mine, are in laying down rules that > make it possible to deal with the unexpected programmatically. Yes; in fact I think handling encoding errors is a fine example of a situation where a really good exception-handling facility would be useful. > What may help considerably is the acknowledgement that different > needs can be addressed by different solutions. Indeed, and as C is used for embedded systems that control almost everything we come in contact with these days, the natural inclination when providing new facilities is to make error handling an important component rather than an afterthought. It is easy to use {functions that provide error returns} in a lackadaisical manner; it is hard or impossible to use {functions that are overly permissive} in a safe manner. (Sorry for the braces but there would be ambiguous parsing without them.) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: University of Bath Computing Services, UK Keywords: Cc: -- Dennis Davis, BUCS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK D.H.Davis@bath.ac.uk