Henning Thielemann wrote:
On Sun, 6 Jul 2008, David Menendez wrote:
data DivideByZero = DivideByZero deriving (Show, Typeable)
Maybe I annoy you with my distinction of errors and exceptions, but I consider DivideByZero a bad example for an exception, because it is more an error (I see it is used in the extensible exception paper anyway). A division by zero is not a problem that comes from the outside world like 'file does not exist'. In contrast to that, it's absolutely predictable: It occurs whenever you divide by zero. I'd thus call it a programming error.
Indeed, we should give some thought to which exceptions are programming errors (divide by zero, assert-failure, error, but not Neil Mitchell's abort...) and put them in a category. We should give some thought to the hierarchy of exceptions we're establishing! I have some trouble seeing from the patches what the hierarchy of exceptions will be; Ian (or someone), could you describe what the current proposal is for that hierarchy? (if it exists yet) -Isaac