Re: Structured exception information

Stephen Leake wrote:

Generally, all you can do is report the error to
the user.
That's what I want to do.

Then what's wrong with a string?

Doesn't feel as type-safe as advertised.

- error code
- error message
- line number
- character position
- hint from the engine
- timestamp from within the engine
- ...

All of this can be put into the string by the routine raising the
exception:
[...]

Sure. That's why there are more JavaScript programmers than Ada programmers.

raise Database_Error with "Error " & Error_Code_Type'image (Error_Code) & ": " & Time_Type'image (Timestamp) & ": " & file_name & ":" & Integer'image (Line_Number) &
":" & Integer'image (Character_Position) & ": " & Message & ": " & Hint;

Of course, with similar routine for dismantling all this in the handler.

Still, that's not what I expect from Ada.

As a general matter of user-interface design, I would find that
annoying. As a user of a system, the only thing I want from an error
message is either "how do I fix this myself" or "how do I report this
to the maintenance team".

That is a reasonable approach and will work fine most of the time, but it does not explain the lack of a language feature that is taken for granted in other languages - and coming from another language, I find the lack of structured exception information as a defect, even though I realize that I can easily work around it.
The point is that I should not be forced to work around anything.

--
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/
.

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