Exception inferrence (was: Re: [Caml-list] Today's inflamatory opinion: exceptions are bad)

["Chris King" <colanderman@gmail.com>]

(Changed the subject to avoid highjacking Brian's thread more than I
already have...)

On 12/10/06, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 10 December 2006 03:35, Chris King wrote:
> > One thing Java (sort of) gets right is keeping track of which
> > exceptions a function can throw, making it easy to ensure that some
> > deeply nested piece of code won't cause the entire application to die
> > from some obscure exception.  I'd love to see a similar feature in
> > O'Caml, whereby the exceptions which a function can raise are part of
> > its type and are inferred and checked by the compiler.
>
> This has been done. There was a tool called ocamlexc that did whole-program
> analysis to find out which exceptions could propagate where. However, it
> wasn't useful enough to be kept up to date.
>
>   http://caml.inria.fr/pub/old_caml_site/ocamlexc/ocamlexc.htm

Hah, I feel foolish... the bottom of that page links [1] to a paper
co-authored by Xavier Leroy himself describing an exception inference
system for O'Caml.  I wonder if it has been considered for inclusion
in the compiler, and, if so, why it was rejected?

- Chris