[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again

• To: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <elharo@m...>
• Subject: Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• From: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
• Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 23:35:56 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>, <sax-devel@l...>
• References: <001101c3fd64$eab0ad30$9e539696@citkwaclaww2k> <p06010201bc6556929ee4@[192.168.254.4]> <002001c3fd8b$10d805a0$0207a8c0@karl> <p06010207bc659097408a@[192.168.254.4]>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <elharo@m...>
To: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
Cc: <xml-dev@l...>; <sax-devel@l...>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 7:30 PM


> At 6:40 PM -0500 2/27/04, Karl Waclawek wrote:
> 
> >I admit I am not a native speaker, but IMO the wording above
> >would not contradict the behaviour of an exception stopping
> >the parser cold. Exceptions are normally thought of as
> >the "exceptional" case, and documenting the behaviour of an
> >implementation does usually not imply that it will behave
> >the same when an exception is thrown.
> >
> 
> A very good point. However, I think the sort of exception you're 
> describing is only a truly exceptional exception such as an I/O error 
> like a broken socket or an out of memory condition. I'm not sure a 
> malformed document qualifies as exceptional in this context.

I agree. I rather thought of exceptions thrown in the call-backs,
based on how the application deals with the information it receives.

> There's 
> no reason, after all, the parse method has to throw an exception to 
> indicate malformedness. It could easily have returned a boolean 
> indicating whether or not the document was well-formed. Not that I'm 
> suggesting such a change at this late date, of course. I just want to 
> point out that there are other ways to design such an API that don't 
> rely on exceptions. 

That would be more along my line of thinking anyway ...

> In practice I encounter malformed documents far 
> more often than I/O errors, out of memory errors, and similar 
> problems. They just don't feel that exceptional to me.

Absolutely.

Karl

• References:
  • SAX - endDocument() confusion again
    • From: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
  • Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
    • From: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
  • Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>

• Prev by Date: Re: SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• Next by Date: Re: SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• Previous by thread: Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• Next by thread: Re: [Sax-devel] SAX - endDocument() confusion again
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread