Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:62608
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain ajf.me designates 64.22.89.133 as permitted sender)
Message-ID: <5040DC47.8000305@ajf.me>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:46:15 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120714 Thunderbird/14.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Ferenc Kovacs <info@tyrael.hu>
CC: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <AANLkTimWuPXCs-HT6RgQYmH7UKcOYXkeTiMEnBwBXxnt@mail.gmail.com> <CAH-PCH4YdBr7WfQ2PR0_Fr_C=TfBsSGsbX3G-jonUqyfLrCcZQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAH-PCH4YdBr7WfQ2PR0_Fr_C=TfBsSGsbX3G-jonUqyfLrCcZQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Are exceptions allowed in php core?
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrew Faulds)

On 31/08/12 13:47, Ferenc Kovacs wrote:
> It was also mentioned in that thread that we already have a bunch of
> exceptions in spl, and some of the spl features should be in the core (or
> it is already in the core for example IteratorAggregate).
I personally don't see why SPL is separate from core PHP, especially 
since it's required. Why must the core not have OO stuff, but have 
non-OO stuff?
> Personally I think that OOP features should be allowed to throw Exceptions,
> and I think that it would still in line with the our users expectations.
> The only problem that I can think of is that for some stuff, we have both a
> procedural and an oop API, but I'm not proposing turning everything into
> Exceptions, but using them where appropriate.
>
Not for PHP 5.5 (if that's happening?), but for PHP 6 I think a lot of 
things should become exceptions. I don't think that, personally, PHP's 
current error handling system is sufficient for properly handling 
errors. I think it's fine for warnings, notices, and deprecations. It's 
well suited to that kind of thing, and for that it should be kept (along 
with completely fatal core errors, where instantiating an object is 
inappropriate or impossible.) And yes, I think there should be 
exceptions in core PHP where appropriate

But for handling actual errors, e.g. being unable to open a file, or 
failing to initialise something, Exceptions are far better suited to the 
task. Especially where the error is non-fatal and you may wish to catch 
it and do something else (for instance, if a file didn't exist, you 
could create a new one, perhaps).

Also, I think PHP's keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude to some errors at 
the moment actually makes things harder, since it will often keep going, 
leaving behind some NULL value, when it would be much easier to debug if 
it stopped since then you don't have a strange undefined application 
state. But that's just my opinion :)

-- 
Andrew Faulds
http://ajf.me/