Unexpected try/catch behaviour

[Laszlo Lovei]

On Feb 24, 12:11 am, "Richard O'Keefe" <o...@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> When is it appropriate to use try E of H catch ... end
> instead of try case E of H end catch ... end?

I always find the former more appropriate. I usually only want to
catch specific exceptions from specific expressions, and consider
other exceptions as errors. In this situation, "try case E of H end
catch ... end" can incidentally catch errors, while a simple "try E of
H catch ... end" does exactly what I want. I admit that in most "try"
expressions I don't need the "of H" part, but when I need it, "try ...
of" is always more appropriate than "try case ... of".

Another point: if you want to catch exceptions from H, you can write
"try case E of H end catch ... end". However, it is much harder to
write code that doesn't catch exceptions from H: in "case try E
catch ... end of H end" you must extend H with clauses that do
something in case of a caught exception. (The "ets:slot" example was
easy, because the exception was treated in the same way as the end of
the table, but normally exceptions signal exceptional situations,
which should be treated differently.)


Laszlo