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in reply to Exception Classes Advice on Subclasses

In Java and C++, exceptions are typically instances of some class, and are "thrown" by bad code and caught in surrounding "try/catch" syntax.

While some people have built these elaborate synonymous structures using Perl packages, I have found very little advantage in them over using Perl's built-in exception mechanism.

In Perl, exceptions are a scalar value, stored in the special variable $@. These exceptions are "thrown" by bad code using the keyword die and caught in surrounding code by eval { } syntax.

The advantages of classes appears to be when there are so many possible causes of failure that you need to send back uber-complex reporting structures to attempt to explain it. If you don't need all this complexity (and you should always avoid undue complexity), just use die/eval.

Write Perl in Perl idioms using Perl's mechanisms. Otherwise you're just coding in Java or C++, but sprinkled with funny sigils.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

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Re^2: Exception Classes Advice on Subclasses
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 21, 2005 at 18:22 UTC
    Write Perl in Perl idioms using Perl's mechanisms.

    Yes. Yes. YES!

    That should be added to the Monk's quips and displayed on every page of this site.


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