Exception handling—A static approach

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a static approach to exception handling. The static approach is proposed as a consequence of an examination of existing language constructs for exception handling in which several trouble spots have been revealed. The static approach consists basically of one concept, namely the sequel concept. Although the sequel concept is sufficient to specify exception handling within a program, one additional concept is introduced, namely the derived definition concept that is introduced as a generalization of the derived type and generic concepts from Ada. The main advantages of the static approach are first that it is truly static as opposed to the existing language constructs in which dynamic association is used in some way or another; and, secondly, the language constructs for exception handling are simple, easy to implement and based on familiar concepts.