Hello,
I was advised respectfully to post my query here.
Please, read the whole letter before you do anything, because I tried to
construct the problem step by step.
Also keep in mind, that the problem I query here is more general, and
similar cases occur elsewhere, not just in this particular example I present
below.
*Intro story* ( Skip if you are in a hurry )
I'm participating in several open-source server development projects, most
of them are written in C, and some of them have C++ code hidden here and
there.
These programs, are developed by many, and by many ways, and so, more often
than not it is very hard to determine the 'real cause of bugs'.
This almost always leads to 'bugfixes' which 'treat the crash'. Sometimes
they are a few lines of extra checks, like IFs.
Sometimes they are complex, and even surprisingly clever hacks.
Thus understanding the 'code' of them is challenging, but the end result is
a pile of ... hacks fixing bugs fixing hacks fixing bug, which also were put
there to fix yet another bugs.
+
When I started to learn functional programming, I was told, that
the correctness of a functional program can be proved a lot more easily, in
fact in a straight mathematical way.
+
*My concern*
is about predictable failure of sw written in Haskell.
To illustrate it let's see a Haskell pattern matching example:
Let's say I have defined some states my object could be in, and I did in a
switch in some C-like language:
> switch ( x )
{
Case 0:
"Unchecked"
Case 1:
"Checked"
Case 2:
"Unknown"
}
And in Haskell pattern matching:
switch 1 = "Unchecked"
switch 2 = "Checked"
switch 3 = "Unknown"
Let's say, these are clearly defined states of some objects.
Then let's say something unexpected happens: x gets something else than 0 1
2.
Now we have a problem, which is most generally fixed in these ways:
C-like:
> switch ( x )
{
Case 0:
"Unchecked"
Case 1:
"Checked"
Case 2:
"Unknown"
Default:
"Nothing"
}
Haskell like:
switch 1 = "Unchecked"
switch 2 = "Checked"
switch 3 = "Unknown"
switch x = "Nothing"
These general ways really avoid this particular crash, but does something
real bad to the code in my opinion.
Below are some cases x can go wrong:
*1. The bad data we got as 'x', could have came from an another part of our
very program, which is the REAL CAUSE of the crash, but we successfully hide
it.*
*
Which makes it harder to fix later, and thus eventually means the death of
the software product. Eventually someone has to rewrite it.
Which is economically bad for the company, since rewriting implies increased
costs.
2. The bad data we got as 'x', could also could have come form a real
word object,
we have underestimated, or which changed in the meantime.
3. This 'x' could have been corrupted over a network, or by 'mingling' or by
other faulty software or something.
Point 1:
If we allow ourself such general bugfixes, we eventually kill the ability of
the project to 'evolve'.
Point 2:
Programmers eventually take up such 'arguably bad' habits, thus making
harder to find such bugs.
Thus it would be wiser to tell my people to never write Default cases, and
such general pattern matching cases.
*
Which leads to the very reason I wrote to you:
I want to propose this for Haskell prime:
I would like to have a way for Haskell, not to crash, when my coders write
pattern matching without the above mentioned general case.
Like having the compiler auto-include those general cases for us,
but when those cases got hit, then* instead of crashing*, it *should **report
some error* on *stdout *or *stderr*.
(It would be even nicer if it cold have been traced.)
This is very much like warning suppression, just that it's crash
suppression, with the need of a report message of course.
*I would like to hear your opinion on this.*
I also think, that there are many similar cases in haskell, where not
crashing, just error reporting would be way more beneficial.
In my case for server software, where network corrupted data,
( and data which has been 'tampered with' by some 'good guy' who think he's
robin hood if he can 'hack' the server )
is an every day reality.
Thanks for your time reading my 'storm'.
Greets,
Andrew
