多年来,我一直无法得到以下问题的一个像样的答案:为什么一些开发人员如此反对受控异常?我有过无数次的对话,在博客上读过一些东西,读过Bruce Eckel说的话(我看到的第一个站出来反对他们的人)。

我目前正在编写一些新代码,并非常注意如何处理异常。我试图了解那些“我们不喜欢受控异常”的人的观点,但我仍然看不出来。

我的每一次谈话都以同样的问题结束。让我把它建立起来:

一般来说(从Java的设计方式来看),

Error is for things that should never be caught (VM has a peanut allergy and someone dropped a jar of peanuts on it) RuntimeException is for things that the programmer did wrong (programmer walked off the end of an array) Exception (except RuntimeException) is for things that are out of the programmer's control (disk fills up while writing to the file system, file handle limit for the process has been reached and you cannot open any more files) Throwable is simply the parent of all of the exception types.

我听到的一个常见的说法是,如果发生了异常,那么所有开发人员要做的就是退出程序。

我听到的另一个常见论点是受控异常使得重构代码更加困难。

对于“我要做的就是退出”的参数,我说即使你退出了,你也需要显示一个合理的错误消息。如果你只是在处理错误上押注,那么当程序在没有明确说明原因的情况下退出时,你的用户不会太高兴。

对于“它使重构变得困难”的人群来说,这表明没有选择适当的抽象级别。与其声明方法抛出IOException,不如将IOException转换为更适合当前情况的异常。

我对用catch(Exception)(或在某些情况下用catch(Throwable)包装Main没有问题,以确保程序可以优雅地退出-但我总是捕获我需要的特定异常。这样做至少可以显示适当的错误消息。

人们从来不会回答的问题是:

如果抛出RuntimeException 子类代替异常 子类,你怎么知道 你应该去抓?

如果答案是catch Exception,那么您也在以与系统异常相同的方式处理程序员错误。在我看来这是不对的。

如果你捕获Throwable,那么你是在以同样的方式处理系统异常和虚拟机错误(等等)。在我看来这是不对的。

如果答案是您只捕获您知道抛出的异常,那么您如何知道抛出了哪些异常呢?当程序员X抛出一个新的异常而忘记捕获它时会发生什么?这对我来说似乎很危险。

我认为显示堆栈跟踪的程序是错误的。不喜欢受控异常的人不会有这种感觉吗?

所以,如果你不喜欢受控异常,你能解释一下为什么不,并回答没有得到回答的问题吗?

我不是在寻求什么时候使用这两种模型的建议,我想知道的是为什么人们从RuntimeException扩展,因为他们不喜欢从Exception扩展,和/或为什么他们捕获一个异常然后重新抛出一个RuntimeException,而不是将抛出添加到他们的方法中。我想了解不喜欢受控异常的动机。


当前回答

Artima发表了一篇对。net架构师之一Anders Hejlsberg的采访,其中尖锐地讨论了反对受控异常的论点。品性差的人:

The throws clause, at least the way it's implemented in Java, doesn't necessarily force you to handle the exceptions, but if you don't handle them, it forces you to acknowledge precisely which exceptions might pass through. It requires you to either catch declared exceptions or put them in your own throws clause. To work around this requirement, people do ridiculous things. For example, they decorate every method with, "throws Exception." That just completely defeats the feature, and you just made the programmer write more gobbledy gunk. That doesn't help anybody.

其他回答

程序员需要知道一个方法可能抛出的所有异常,以便正确地使用它。因此,仅仅用一些异常来打击他并不一定能帮助一个粗心的程序员避免错误。

微小的好处被繁重的成本所抵消(特别是在较大、不太灵活的代码库中,不断修改接口签名是不切实际的)。

Static analysis can be nice, but truly reliable static analysis often inflexibly demands strict work from the programmer. There is a cost-benefit calculation, and the bar needs to be set high for a check that leads to a compile time error. It would be more helpful if the IDE took on the role of communicating which exceptions a method may throw (including which are unavoidable). Although perhaps it would not be as reliable without forced exception declarations, most exceptions would still be declared in documentation, and the reliability of an IDE warning is not so crucial.

下面是反对受控异常的一个论点(来自joelonsoftware.com):

The reasoning is that I consider exceptions to be no better than "goto's", considered harmful since the 1960s, in that they create an abrupt jump from one point of code to another. In fact they are significantly worse than goto's: They are invisible in the source code. Looking at a block of code, including functions which may or may not throw exceptions, there is no way to see which exceptions might be thrown and from where. This means that even careful code inspection doesn't reveal potential bugs. They create too many possible exit points for a function. To write correct code, you really have to think about every possible code path through your function. Every time you call a function that can raise an exception and don't catch it on the spot, you create opportunities for surprise bugs caused by functions that terminated abruptly, leaving data in an inconsistent state, or other code paths that you didn't think about.

我不想重复所有(许多)反对受控异常的原因,我只选一个。我已经记不清写了多少次这段代码了:

try {
  // do stuff
} catch (AnnoyingcheckedException e) {
  throw new RuntimeException(e);
}

99%的情况下我对此无能为力。最后,块进行必要的清理(或者至少它们应该这样做)。

我也记不清有多少次看到这样的场景:

try {
  // do stuff
} catch (AnnoyingCheckedException e) {
  // do nothing
}

为什么?因为有人要处理这件事,而且很懒。错了吗?确定。会发生吗?绝对的。如果这是一个未检查的异常呢?应用程序就会死掉(这比吞下一个异常更好)。

然后我们有一些令人愤怒的代码,它使用异常作为一种流控制形式,就像java.text.Format所做的那样。Bzzzt。错了。用户在表单的数字字段中输入“abc”也不例外。

好吧,我想这是三个原因。

Ok... Checked exceptions are not ideal and have some caveat but they do serve a purpose. When creating an API there are specific cases of failures that are contractual of this API. When in the context of a strongly statically typed language such as Java if one does not use checked exceptions then one must rely on ad-hoc documentation and convention to convey the possibility of error. Doing so removes all benefit that the compiler can bring in handling error and you are left completely to the good will of programmers.

因此,一个人删除了Checked异常,比如在c#中所做的,那么如何以编程和结构的方式传达错误的可能性呢?如何通知客户端代码,这样那样的错误可能发生,必须处理?

在处理受控异常时,我听到了各种可怕的事情,它们被滥用了,这是肯定的,但未受控异常也是如此。我说,等几年,当api被堆叠在很多层的时候,你会乞求某种结构化的方法来传达失败。

以异常在API层底部某处抛出的情况为例,因为没有人知道这个错误甚至可能发生,即使它是一种非常合理的错误类型,当调用代码抛出它时(例如FileNotFoundException而不是VogonsTrashingEarthExcept…)在这种情况下,我们是否处理它并不重要,因为没有任何东西可以处理它)。

Many have argued that not being able to load the file was almost always the end of the world for the process and it must die a horrible and painful death. So yeah.. sure ... ok.. you build an API for something and it loads file at some point... I as the user of said API can only respond... "Who the hell are you to decide when my program should crash !" Sure Given the choice where exceptions are gobbled up and leave no trace or the EletroFlabbingChunkFluxManifoldChuggingException with a stack trace deeper than the Marianna trench I would take the latter without a cinch of hesitation, but does this mean that it is the desirable way to deal with exception ? Can we not be somewhere in the middle, where the exception would be recast and wrapped each time it traversed into a new level of abstraction so that it actually means something ?

最后,我看到的大多数争论都是“我不想处理异常,许多人不想处理异常。受控异常迫使我去处理它们,因此我讨厌受控异常。”完全消除这种机制并将其降级到地狱的深渊是愚蠢的,缺乏判断力和远见。

如果我们消除了受控异常,我们也可以消除函数的返回类型,并且总是返回一个“anytype”变量……这样生活就简单多了,不是吗?

正如人们已经说过的,Java字节码中不存在受控异常。它们只是一种编译器机制,与其他语法检查没有什么不同。我看到很多受控异常,就像我看到编译器抱怨一个冗余的条件:if(true) {a;b;}。这很有帮助,但我可能是故意这么做的,所以我忽略你的警告。

事实是,如果你强制执行受控异常,你将无法强迫每个程序员“做正确的事情”,而其他人现在都是附带损害,他们只是因为你制定的规则而讨厌你。

修复坏程序!不要试图修改语言来阻止它们!对于大多数人来说,“对异常做一些事情”实际上只是告诉用户它。我也可以告诉用户一个未检查的异常,所以不要让您的已检查异常类出现在我的API中。