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Cc: John Coggeshall <john@coggeshall.org>,
	Derick Rethans <derick@php.net>,
	PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:42:55 -0700
To: Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Exceptions and Errors
From: sterling@php.net (Sterling Hughes)


On Apr 12, 2004, at 3:45 AM, Andi Gutmans wrote:

> At 12:41 PM 4/12/2004 +0200, Derick Rethans wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Apr 2004, John Coggeshall wrote:
>>
>> > As a matter of consistency, I would like to suggest that for those
>> > extensions which have a OO/procedural syntax that the non-fatal 
>> errors
>> > generated by those extensions be thrown as Exceptions when called 
>> from
>> > an OO syntax. I have already committed such a change to Tidy, and I
>> > can't see any serious reason why such a change can't be implemented 
>> for
>> > internal classes.
>> >
>> > Feedback welcome.
>>
>> I think it's a stupid idea (actually OO is a stupid idea but that's
>> something for another dicussion ;-):
>>
>> 1. In order to silently ignore failed queries you still have to put a
>>    stupid try..except block around it.
>>
>> 2. KISS: PHP is supposed to be SIMPLE; with all thos advanced OO stuff
>>    writing scripts for PHP starts becoming less and less easy. Sure,
>>    they are already using OO but that's just a notation. Some 
>> extensions
>>    are only OO, like DOM, but that doesn't mean that every Joe Average
>>    has any idea on what exceptions are. Please, kepe things simple.
>>    Don't force people.
>
> Derick,
>
> The fact that you have something personal against OOP doesn't mean 
> it's not good.
> I think that functional context should continue to work as usual, but 
> there's a big advantage to be able to catch problems with try/catch 
> and not have to if() each internal function call separately (which you 
> probably don't do :)
> I don't see a problem with OOP extensions throwing exceptions.
>

I like OO (*), and I think warnings (non-fatal errors) as exceptions 
are a stupid idea.  Does that count? ;-)

Exceptions in languages like Java are used explicitly to catch fatal 
errors, not to catch basic errors.  Converting warnings to exceptions 
would change the meaning of a warning from something which is nice for 
development, or logging purposes, but handled by your control flow, 
into an unrecoverable error.

Errors as exceptions are a different story.  I don't think that's a bad 
idea at all.  But leave good alone, warnings shouldn't be exceptions.

-Sterling

(*) Though my like is most definitely due to stockholm syndrome, and 
excessive brainrape.  Nonetheless. :)