Why exceptions shouldn't be used for flow control [Re: YAS to the "Reading line-by-line" Problem]

[Phil Mayes]

William Tanksley wrote in message ...
>On Fri, 25 Jun 1999 10:19:05 +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
>>William Tanksley wrote:


> [long discussion of f.eof() vs. exceptions excised]

>OTOH, that particular exceptionn would get thrown only in a truly bizzare
>situation, because all code would look somethinng like this:
>
>while not f.eof():
>  line = f.readline()
>  # ...


I have sometimes had to read non-atomic objects from a stream, eg:
  while 1:
    name = f.readline()
    addr1 = f.readline()
    addr2 = f.readline()
    # combine name, addr1, addr2 into something
    # put it somewhere
Other examples: Pascal-style strings; mixed-length objects.
Doing this properly in C is a pain because of the requirement to test
error/eof after reading each fragment.  Assuming low overhead, exceptions
strike me as a significant improvement.
--
Phil Mayes    pmayes AT olivebr DOT com
Olive Branch Software - home of Arranger