Subject: Re: no group meeting 2/21
From: Andrei Alexandrescu (andrei@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2002 - 12:25:21 PST
By this I'm answering to Todd and Mark as well. Thanks a lot for your
interest.
> What kind of error handling? Do you mean things like array bounds checks,
> data race detection, etc.?
That's detection (as opposite to handling).
> Or is this more like dynamic handling of
> exceptions and other user-domain errors?
That's it. The idea is formalizing the behavior of a program in the presence
of an error (exceptional condition), and generating code that helps the
program maintain consistency. Example:
class Widget {
int a = 0;
void doSomething() {
try {
a = 1;
someCall(); // might throw
}
catch (SomeException e) {
handleError(e);
}
...
}
If someCall() throws, the program state ought to be restored to the state
before the try call. So a compiler might generate code such as:
class Widget {
int a = 0;
void doSomething() {
int old_a = a;
try {
a = 1;
someCall(); // might throw
}
catch (Throwable e) {
a = old_a;
handleError();
}
...
}
In the general case, each function might have an "undo" function that allows
the system to restore the state of the program should an exceptional
condition occur anywhere.
This is what I'm after.
The industry has very recently reached some state of the art wrt what
writing "exception-safe" code is all about. Also, my recent experience
suggests that what's "state of the art" in the industry has been done much
nicer in the academia a long time ago. I was wondering if that's the case
about error handling.
Andrei
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