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[nycphp-talk] If/else vs Try/catch

John Zabroski johnzabroski at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 28 15:56:39 EST 2007


--- csnyder <chsnyder at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Error handling doesn't need to be part of your
> program logic anymore.
> 
> -- 
> Chris Snyder
> http://chxo.com/

Be careful saying that, especially to a newbie.  While
experienced programmers presumably understand
statements other experienced programmers like you
make, a newbie might not understand an overly general
statement like the one you just made.  I understand
what you are saying, but it is a gross simplification
for someone needing deep, penetrating understanding of
a new concept.

Error handling does not just magically disappear from
program logic, even if you use try/catch. In fact, it
is quite easy for code to fall prey to a Split Cleaner
bug pattern when using exception handling.  Ken Downs
posted a "gotcha" with exception handling already.

Try/catch does not eliminate error handling from
program logic.  Instead, it does only what it was
originally designed to do: let the caller of the
function determine how to respond to a failure
condition.  Explicitly, the caller has greater
responsibility in the call chain, because the calling
function has more contextual knowledge and should be
more able to recover from failure gracefully.


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