Re: [Boost-users] [boost] [review][constrained_value] Review of Constrained Value Library begins today

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [boost] [review][constrained_value] Review of Constrained Value Library begins today
From: Thomas Klimpel (Thomas.Klimpel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-12-23 16:12:28

Mika Heiskanen wrote:
> David Abrahams wrote:
> > I suggest reading through my posts in
> > http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/browse_frm/thread/80083ac31a1188da 
> > which give the arguments in detail.
> 
> Thank you for the link, I read the thread from start to finish.
> It was not clear to me at the end that any agreement was
> actually reached, in particular with respect to terminology.

I also read the thread from start to finish. About halfway through the thread, I suddenly could follow the arguments given by David Abrahams, and he seems to be right. But now std::logic_error suddenly seems to make no sense any longer. Is this a valid conclusion from reading that thread?

Then I reviewed my past issues with using exceptions in the light of this new insight. My worst issues with exceptions occured in connection with OpenMP and MPI. Because I used exceptions as a way to report errors to the user, I wanted them to propagate upwards out of the parallel regions. But because the exceptions don't occur synchronous in all workers, this just messed up the control flow. And neither OpenMP nor MPI try to help the programmer with the task of synchronising exceptions and propagating them upwards. However, as soon as I issue exceptions only in exceptional circumstances, the whole mess becomes much more managable again. So a manageable solution would be to handle "valid" user errors before entering the parallel sections of the programm, handle the few remaining "valid" exceptions (like out of memory conditions) by explicit communication between the workers, and don't try to recover from "logic errors" inside the parallel sections. This may force me to structure my (parallel) algorithms such that they have explicit resource allocation phases (during which no communication occurs, but exceptions are allowed), and running phases (during which no exceptions are allowed, but communication may occur). Does this solution makes sense? Is there a better solution for this problem?

> Sorry if I am being a nuisance. I thought I had already
> understood the terminology, but reading the thread you
> mentioned made it a fuzzy again.

Sorry for misusing this thread. But reading through the above thread took me quite some time (yet the new insight was worth it), so now I'm eager to get some answers to the questions and thoughts that this thread induced.

Regards,
Thomas