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Originally Posted by lectricpharaoh
I agree with MBirchmeier. They are nice to have, and go a long way to writing robust code. However, the performance is usually much slower than simply checking a flag or return value, and as such, they shouldn't be used for most operations. For example, when opening a file, it seems nonsensical to throw an exception if the file cannot be opened; instead, return a success/failure code like the C standard library does.
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I
strongly disagree with this recommendation.
Firstly, the performance overhead would only make a significant difference if one were expecting exceptions to be thrown on a regular basis. If you throw exceptions only in exceptional circumstances (as the name "exceptions" suggests), then any performance degredation is going to be negligible at best.
Further, exceptions have several advantages over return values. From a structural point of view, they cleanly separate the concept of return values from errors and warnings. From a practical point of view, they automatically propagate up the stack until they are caught, so the programmer need only deal with the error once, rather than construct an elaborate chain of return values, or a singleton/global variable to hold error information. Finally, languages like Java throw compile errors at uncaught exceptions, preventing possible bugs.
In any unusual or exceptional circumstance, exceptions should be used. Return values should not, in my opinion, be used for anything other than returning valid data.
Jul 28th, 2006, 9:29 AM
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