Catch

[Fredrik Linder]

Hi

At the Erlang Workshop in Florence did a discussion about separating
code for normal execution from code for exception(al?) execution take
place.

Now I am wondering what the Erlang community think about a proposal that
came up.

The proposal is to extend where a catch might be placed. Note that the
current use of catches could still be valid.

Proposal:

case <expr> of
    NormalMatch1 ->
        blabla;
    NormalMatch2 ->
        blabla
catch
    {'EXIT', Reason} ->
        blabla;
    ExceptionMatch2 ->
        blabla
end

If this feels like a good way of doing it, then maybe also extend this
to receive statements:

receive
    NormalMatch ->
        blabla
after
    Time ->
        blabla
catch
    {'EXIT', Pid, Reason} ->
        blabla;
    SignalMatch ->
        blabla
end

By introducing an 'EXIT' record could this be extended further:

-record('EXIT', {pid, reason}).

recieve|case <expr> of
    NormalMatch ->
        blabla
catch
    #'EXIT'{} ->
        blabla;
    #'EXIT'{pid = Pid} ->    % In a case statement is Pid == self()
        blabla;
    #'EXIT'{reason = Reason} ->
        blabla
end

The last suggestion could be implemented as syntactical suger (I guess).

/Fredrik