On Sat, 9 Dec 2006, Brian Hurt wrote:

>
> I think I've come to the conclusion that exceptions are bad.
>
> In Ocaml, they're useless in many cases, and in most cases wrong. Avoiding 
> them generally makes for better code.  There are two vague types of 
> exceptions- those the program can, and probably should- handle, and those 
> that the program can't, and probably should even try to, handle.
>
> For the former, returning a variant type ('a option if nothing else) is a 
> better idea, for (at least) two reasons.  One, the type system enforces the 
> requirement to actually handle the error, at the location the return value of 
> the function is desired.  Want the result?  Handle the errors. Which allow a 
> function to "pass along" an error if it wants to.  So you could still write 
> functions like:

[..snip..]

Guess there's third type, code might detect catastrophic failure
during the run of custom block finalizer, in which case, should there
be a need for a cleanup actions, raising an exception might be the
only choice, however i couldn't say offhand whether OCaml allows to
raise exceptions in this context at all.

--
vale