[Haskell-cafe] New Hackage category: Error Handling

[Henning Thielemann]

On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Michael Snoyman wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Ross Paterson <ross at soi.city.ac.uk> wrote:
>       On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 05:52:11PM +0200, Michael Snoyman wrote:
>       > For the record, I find this pedanticism misplaced, ...
>
>       I think you'll find that's "pedantry".
> 
> 
> Hoped someone would comment exactly that ;).

:-)

Nonetheless: Although there might be cases, where it is not immediately 
clear what is "error" and what is "exception" (not to mention, that 
different people prefer to use the words for the corresponding concepts in 
a different way, if they would do so consistently, it would be ok), in 
most cases it is clear. Have you ever tried to handle an "array index out 
of range" situation at run-time? I think, it cannot be sensibly handled by 
the program automatically. Thus there is no other way than terminating the 
program. Thus I'd call this situation an "error" not an "exception". Of 
course, people like to throw in here a web server as counterexample. So to 
speak: With respect to exceptions web servers are an exception.