On 02.07.2017 19:01, Thomas Klausner wrote: > Hi! > > On Sun, Jul 02, 2017 at 11:59:56AM +0200, Binarus wrote: > >> - Most people recommend to "catch the error" DateTime throws when >> encountering such date-times, but if I got it right, that always >> involves eval, even when using modules like Try:Tiny and the like, so I >> don't want to do that. > > As somebody who most likely started on of the threads you mentioned, I > have to say that using eval is (as Zefram already said) the right > answer. > > I do not know why you do not want to use eval, it's very stable > (esp. in recent Perls) and not at all slow and dangerous. >
Thank you very much for your answer. There are multiple reasons why I didn't want to go that way. First, I am not a fan of the try-catch stuff (i.e. "error catching") at all. For example, I have experienced all sorts of glitches and worries with try-catch in the MS .NET world. stackoverflow.com is full of questions (and in most cases, fundamentally different answers to the same question) regarding try-catch-finally in .NET. This is just an example - IMHO, this whole error catching thing is not a clean concept from the beginning on (in all programming languages). Having said this, I know that there are not many people left who have the same opinion, and of course, I am using what I have to use to reach my goal, so this is not worth any further discussion. The second (and by far more important) reason are threads like this one: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4006267/what-is-the-best-way-to-handle-exceptions-in-perl The accepted answer there proposes error handling by eval blocks (as people here did), but then states: "It's fragile, though, and will break in a number of subtle edge cases that most people don't think about." >From my experience, I know that I will be the first one to run into one of these edge cases, whatever they may be. This answer has 49 upvotes, so can't be too wrong. Now, what should I make out of that? He doesn't give examples what this subtle edge cases could be, but I see no reason to mistrust the answer. Given the fact that I have found similar mysterious statements (i.e. warnings against eval without further explanation or examples) at other places as well, how do I know if I am affected? On the other hand, I have read the eval documentation in perldoc multiple times now and could not find any hint about when it could fail or why it could be dangerous (at least, not in the block eval part). I meanwhile tend to believe perldoc more than any other source; they usually emphasize what could go wrong in big red letters, and I didn't find such sections in the block eval documentation part. Thus, I have decided to use the eval block error catching in that case. Nevertheless, for the reasons mentioned above, I am not exceptionally happy about having to do so, and I still would prefer if DateTime would provide a method to check in advance if a date-time is valid or not. Again, thanks for your time and expertise. Regards, Binarus
