on Sun Dec 21 2008, Mika Heiskanen
David Abrahams wrote:
on Sat Dec 20 2008, Mika Heiskanen
wrote: David Abrahams wrote:
Exceptions should almost never be used in response to broken invariants. Pardon my ignorance, but how come? The constraints I have to validate usually concern broken user input
That's not a broken invariant. A broken invariant means your program is broken.
via the command line or a query string. How should I deal with them if not with exceptions? Or to be more precise, why should I not use constrained types for validating user input if it saves me a lot of if-statements in the long run?
I would never argue that you shouldn't do that.
So you see why I would prefer the constrained value class being reviewed to throw?
No. In general libraries, invalid user input should be reported via a different mechanism, because there's no reason to believe that the condition should be handled far from the site where validation is requested. If you decide that throwing is an appropriate response for your application, you can do that in a layer outside the validation.
Also, pardon my ignorance again, but would you care to explain how an expert would handle broken invariants in broken programs if not via exceptions? I was not aware there is a better solution.
Stop the program immediately. If appropriate, execute emergency shutdown measures. Do not unwind stack, do not pass "Go," do not collect $200. ;-) -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com