I like it. Although it's only sugar you're right -- it helps reading a bit. But
I would allow (or even require) "try" before a block of code:
if (condition) try {
...
} catch (Exception ex) {
...
}
Seeing "try" there cuts down on the gray matter needed to understand what it
does. And just not to stray too much from the C-family.
Tomek
Ulrik Mikaelsson Wrote:
> One thing I often encounter in D, and other languages, is functions looking
> something like;
>
> void myfunc(Obj input)
> {
> try {
> do_something(input);
> } catch (SomeException e) {
> handle_error(e);
> }
> }
>
> While there's no real problem with this code, I have some experience from
> Ruby, which has added some syntactic sugar regarding this, making all
> code-blocks a potential "try-clause", if there's a catch-block (or finally).
>
> In D, it would look something like (and have the exact same semantic meaning
> of the code above);
>
> void myfunc(Obj input)
> {
> do_something(input);
> }
> catch (SomeException e)
> {
> handle_error(e);
> }
>
> IMHO, this syntactic addition gives a few advantages;
> * Makes the code slightly more readable, since the "exceptional" code-paths
> are clearly separated
> * Biases me as a programmer to think a little bit more of exactly what
> exceptions can be raised in a function, improving my code-quality.
> * When I'm about to write a try-clause, makes me think twice if the code
> could not be extracted as a separate method instead (if I can only figure a
> good name for it), also improving readability and code-structure.
>
> To sum up; while this is purely syntactic sugar, my personal experience from
> Ruby is that this syntax encourages better coding on my part, which I think
> would be a good thing to incorporate in D.
>
> One thing, I'm pondering though, is exactly in what blocks this should be
> allowed, and what semantics should apply.
> * Inner anonymous functions?
> * If statements?
> * For-loops? If so, is the try for the entire loop, or per iteration?
> * How does this relate to the contract-programming-features in D?
>
> Comments / opinions on this, anyone?
