On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Donn Cave <d...@avvanta.com> wrote: > Quoth John Lato <jwl...@gmail.com>, > >> An exception is caused by some sort of interaction with the run-time >> system (frequently a hardware issue). The programmer typically can't >> check for these in advance, but can only attempt to recover after >> they've happened. >> >> An error is some sort of bug that should be fixed by the programmer. > > I have never felt that I really understood that one.
Me too :-) BTW, John, how often do you encounter _hardware_ issues compared to "errors"? Is an "out of memory" thing an error or exception? You will say "exception, for sure", wouldn't you? :-) And if it is a result of applying known-to-be-very-memory-hungry algorithms to non-trivial input? Looks like programmer's error, doesn't it? And I think I can provide lots of similar examples. If there exists separation between errors and exceptions, it should be very strong and evident — otherwise "casual programmers" like myself will need to stare at the ceiling every time they write something to decide what suits best. Gregory _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe