Re: [boost] Exception lib?

From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-05 18:05:44

Bronek Kozicki wrote:
> Peter Dimov wrote:
>> How does your compiler help you spot duplicate tags?
>
> compiler (or actually language) provides tools to organize names in
> open (namespaces) or closed (nested types) hierarchies. These tools
> so far worked rather well, allowing users to define unique names
> (where sane design and source code organization are in place).
>
> Of course, if you do not want to use these tools, you do not have to.
> For incomplete types it's OK to redeclare tag whenever you want to
> use it, and it's almost no different that using literals (although
> slightly annoying and one has to be careful of scope). However, once
> you want to organize names, tags have many advantages over strings. I
> tried to explain these advantages in previous messages. I believe
> that users will want to organize tags in all but most trivial
> projects, as exceptions handling begs for such organization due to
> its distributed nature.

I've been thinking about how you might organize the tags. Consider the 
header that defines class file_read_error:

//file_read_error.h:

#include "read_error.h"

class tag_file_name; //string
class tag_function_name; //string

class file_read_error: public read_error { };

This looks like the natural place to declare the tags. But what happens if 
someone looks at read_error.h:

//read_error.h

#include "io_error.h"

class read_error: public io_error { };

The problem I see here is that if you're looking at read_error.h, it is not 
at all clear that some read_error exceptions have file name and function 
name info in them. In addition, as other pointed out as well, the compiler 
can not help you with avoiding typos. So really, the only way you can 
"organize" the tag types is by specifying them in the documentation, but you 
can do the same with strings.

It's not like I disagree with you, after all right now the proposed Boost 
Exception lib uses tag types. But when you think about it, the *only* 
difference between the tag types and string identifiers is that strings are 
value types and as such they can be manipulated, read from files, etc. I 
think that not being able to do this stuff with the exception info 
identifiers is a good thing, but I don't think it's a big problem.

--Emil