Re: [boost] Re: Exception safety guarantees

From: E. Gladyshev (egladysh_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-04 20:27:52

--- David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
[...]
> 
> The way you're taking code snippets out-of-context is simply
> ridiculous.  

Not true!

Did you read the article before you replied?
Here is a quote from the Solution 1 Brute Force section.

"
The code works, but at the cost of increased size and clumsiness. The two-liner 
just became a ten-liner. This technique isn't appealing; imagine littering all 
of your code with such try-catch statements.

Moreover, this technique doesn't scale well. 
Imagine you have a third operation to do. In that case, 
things suddenly become much clumsier. You can choose between equally awkward solutions: 
nested try statements or a more complicated control flow featuring additional flags. 
These solutions raise code bloating issues, efficiency issues, and, most important, 
severe understandability and maintenance issues."

It doesn't say that the solution is potentially dangerous.
The only real problems are: increased size and clumsiness and scalability.
So many people may think that if I don't really care about size
scalability and clumsiness, I can be safe by using this solution.

The latest CUJ, November, 2003 
Antony Williams, "Strong Exception-Safe Storage"
has the same usage of try/catch(...)

[...]

> articles and books.  At the same time, try to do it without assailing
> as "irresponsible" the work of those who have come before you and who
> have contributed much to peoples' understanding of exception-handling.

In this particular case, I would not call this "understanding".

> 
> Since Andrei and Petru advocate the use of destructors over catch(...)
> and since I have written about the problems induced by catch(...) on
> some systems, your assertion is pure slander.  That is in itself
> irresponsible, and when people understand that they may be less
> inclined to accept whatever technical arguments you have on their own
> merit.
> 
> where-do-these-people-come-from?-ly y'rs,
> 

I guess it is the other way around. 
It is becoming hard to accept *your* arguments on 
their technical merrit.
It seems you are getting kind of desperate but
you are not going to troll me on that. :)

Eugene

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