----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Jones" <rich@annexia.org>
To: "Chris King" <colanderman@gmail.com>
Cc: <caml-list@inria.fr>
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2006 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Today's inflamatory opinion: exceptions are bad

>Perhaps though this is an argument that List.find and friends should
>be returning 'a option, not an argument for all exceptions being bad.

Hi all,

There is also many case where exceptions are faster than 'a option.

Could you imagine a program where (/) returns 'int option because 1/0 is
impossible ? Could you benchmark serioulsy a OCaml matrix multiplication
again C where Array.get return 'a option and that you have all the time to
match the result ?

Exceptions are goods for performance, easy to manipulate (except in
tail-recursive functions) and understand. Return all the time 'a option
thinks to me C programs where functions return 1 if it has been well
computed or 0 otherwise (you all the time checked if it is 0 or 1 but with
execption you just write try ... with on the block of functions).

The case of Coq is another thinks because you can restric the cases using
high level specification (and in this case, when you extract the proof in
ocaml code you have "assert false"...an exception...arg.)

Frédéric Gava