Re: Question on language design (keywords vs Pervasives)

[John Max Skaller <skaller@maxtal.com.au>]

Pierre Weis wrote:

> The ``users can rebind'' argument is definitively what we intended
> when we decided to allow the rebinding of usual operators (infix or
> prefix symbols, such as +, -, *, ...). For ``raise'' this is not so
> clear, since redefining ``raise'' is a very bad idea to obtain a
> readable Caml program. 

	I'm not sure I agree with that. If raise is the _standard_
way to raise an exception, then it _should_ be rebindable (and be
defined
in terms of a more primitive function). The reason is precisely
to permit hooking it by the user, which is an extremely common
requirement.
For example, to introduce some extra logging.

	In C++, exceptions are raise by a keyword 'throw', and it
is a pain, because good practice dictates NOT to ever raise an
exception directly with 'throw', but to call a (template) function
usually defined to simply raise the exception (using throw). 
This permits replacing the function to, for example, print an
error message to stderr, as well as throwing the exception.
The problem is, this doesn't work for any third party code,
or even one's own code, if the idea occurs to one belatedly.

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John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
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