XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

At 6:00 PM -0400 9/20/02, Henri Yandell wrote:


> If the JVM could be configured with the new JDK 1.4 Logging to log
> RuntimeExceptions and not blow the Thread, then I would agree
> wholeheartedly. A service I've inherited recently came apart due to their
> being a precondition that input must have length of 15 [as dictated in the
> protocol, and in fact the physics of the transmitting objects] and would
> IAE if anything else came in.
>
> So of course the radio carrier carrying the transmitting objects message
> had to prepend some spurious data and instant RuntimeExceptions at
> production.
>
> With this, I'm still not convinced by Bloch and Eckel that I should have a
> more explosive system just because of the belief that developers can never
> be beaten into not doing empty catch clauses.

Bloch certainly wouldn't say this should be a runtime exception. 
Eckel, I'm not sure. Since you were feeding external, environmental 
data into the system, it was not correct to assume that it met the 
preconditions. This should have been handled by a checked exception.

And of course, you can catch runtime exceptions if you think they're 
possible. You just don't have to if you're sure they're not.
--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo AT metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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