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Re: Two exceptions

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Eric Sosman wrote:

> On 12/8/2017 5:53 PM, Victor Porton wrote:
>> I am writing something like a recursive descent parser: That is, I
>> inspect object and its parts. When a part of an object is wrong, my
>> method parse() throws my exception ParseException. It is sometimes
>> handled in parse() of a higher-level object.
>>
>> Example:
>>
>> An object X may be either X1 or X2 or X3 class.
>>
>> I try to call parse() for an object of X1 class. If it parses, the higher
>> level parse() (for X) return X1 casted to X. If it fails with exception
>> ParseException, X2 is tried, and if that fails too X3 is tried.
>>
>> Or for an object X I try calling parse() for subobjects Y and Z. If
>> either throws ParseException, the parse exception is propagated for
>> parse() of X.
>>
>> In this way, I consider an object and its possible parts. This is
>> sometimes called recursive descent.
>>
>> But I want also FatalParseException meant to stop parsing of a file
>> altogether if it happens in the object or its subobject.
>>
>> Human logic suggests that FatalParseException is a kind of ParseException
>> and so should be its subclass. But this way handling ParseException we
>> would also handle FatalParseException what is wrong, because
>> FatalParseException is meant to be handled only in the outer method,
>> outside of all parse() methods.
>>
>> So I have two alternatives:
>>
>> 1. Derive ParseException from FatalParseException what seems to do the
>> right thing but seems illogical.
>>
>> 2. Not derive either of these two exceptions from each other.
>>
>> By the way, I am to rewrite an Ada project in Java (because the Ada
>> compiler is too buggy and I can't work with it). In Ada all exceptions
>> are independent (no exception is a subclass of another one).
>
>      Alternative #1 seems preferable (to me).  Perhaps you would find it
> more palatable if you renamed FatalParseException to ParseFailure and
> ParseException to ParseMismatch.
>
>      However, I feel you may be misusing exceptions.  They are supposed
> to be, well, "exceptional" rather than "normal control flow."  In a
> recursive descent parser you *expect* many matching failures, just in
> the ordinary course of events; a matching failure is not "exceptional."
> (Also, building a Throwable can be rather expensive, especially if it
> is thrown from a deep point in the call stack and must fill in a long
> stack trace.  Java's optimizations tend to focus on the "normal" cases
> rather than on the "exceptional" ones, so throwing and catching, even
> though much improved since Java 1.0, still involves a lot of work.)
>
>      Instead of announcing a "venial" mismatch by throwing an exception,
> consider returning a status value from each parse method.  This might
> be a boolean ("It's an X1" / "It's not an X1") or a reference value
> ("It's an X1 and here it is" / "It's not an X1 and here's a null"),
> or something more structured ("Here's a status-and-result-and-info
> object; look at its fields to find out what happened").  Not only is
> this likely to produce faster code, but it may also simplify
>
> X result;
> try {
> result = X1.parse();
> } catch (ParseMismatch ex1) {
> try {
> result = X2.parse();
> } catch (ParseMismatch ex2) {
> try {
> result = X3.parse();
> } catch (ParseMismatch ex3) {
> ...
> }
>
> to something more like
>
> X result = X1.parse();
> if (result == null)
> result = X2.parse();
> if (result == null)
> result = X3.parse();
> ...

The main reason I chose to use exceptions for this, is to allow parse() method
to return the result of parsing (not a boolean value). For example result of
parsing an integer may return "long".

Can you propose another alternative? It is to be easily programmable (if I find
 handling exceptions too slow, I always can rewrite my program).

Oh, I see, you proposed to return "null" instead of my ParseException. It
however also seems to me not a quite good solution, because returning null may
be a non-exceptionable situation (as for a missing optional object in the
parsed resource).

> (You could, of course, nest these differently.)
>
>      Perhaps the structure of the existing Ada code is not amenable
> to this sort of transformation -- but if I were you I'd give it
> some consideration.
>
--
Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org

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Thread

Two exceptions Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> (Victor Porton) - 2017-12-09 00:53 +1200
  Re: Two exceptions Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> (Eric Sosman) - 2017-12-08 18:21 +1200
    Re: Two exceptions Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> (Victor Porton) - 2017-12-09 01:55 +1200
      Re: Two exceptions Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> (Eric Sosman) - 2017-12-09 07:39 +1200
        Re: Two exceptions Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> (Victor Porton) - 2017-12-10 02:39 +1200
          Re: Two exceptions Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> (Victor Porton) - 2017-12-10 02:46 +1200
          Re: Two exceptions Kiwi User <martin@mydomain.invalid> (Kiwi User) - 2017-12-10 00:52 +1200
            Re: Two exceptions Kiwi User <martin@mydomain.invalid> - 2017-12-10 21:50 +0000
      Re: Two exceptions Patrick Roemer <sangamon@netcologne.de> (Patrick Roemer) - 2017-12-09 13:47 +1200
  Re: Two exceptions Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> (Arne Vajhøj) - 2017-12-08 18:49 +1200
    Re: Two exceptions v_borchert@despammed.com (Volker Borchert) (Volker Borchert) - 2017-12-09 07:53 +1200
  Re: Two exceptions ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) (Stefan Ram) - 2017-12-09 16:15 +1200
    Re: Two exceptions Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> (Eric Sosman) - 2017-12-09 14:55 +1200
      Re: Two exceptions Patrick Roemer <sangamon@netcologne.de> (Patrick Roemer) - 2017-12-11 15:09 +1200
        Re: Two exceptions Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru> - 2017-12-12 11:14 +0200

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