Re:You’re better off using Exceptions
by horsawlarway on Monday February 03, 2020 @06:34PM
(#22230580)
Ok, fair - I should have included the very next sentence in the quote as well, since OPs argument seems to be that missing records should NEVER cause exception:
>Anyone who expects a database to always have records and that the absence of a record is an "exception" has a very strange way of thinking.
But pedantics aside, my point stands. There are absolutely contexts and code paths where a missing record is basically unrecoverable. Why bother returning an error to the local calling context when you know that code doesn't make sense anymore and can't recover? A jump to a new code path is the right call, and exceptions do that (with a lot of nice trace information about why we ended up on that new code path to boot).
Doesn't mean a missing record should always result in an exception, but it's certainly not a "very strange way of thinking".
> This just isn't true. It depends on what the record is, and what state you're in (aka: CONTEXT).
These two things mean the same thing. It's in the context - > it is not an inherent property.
It's not an inherent property - > it's not always present.
Some conclude therefore it shouldn't be an exception by default.