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Exceptions and Conditions

Exceptions

[The following text is extracted from SRFI-34, from which STKLOS exceptions are derived]

Exception handlers are one-argument procedures that determine the action the program takes when an exceptional situation is signalled. The system implicitly maintains a current exception handler.

The program raises an exception by invoking the current exception handler, passing to it an object encapsulating information about the exception. Any procedure accepting one argument may serve as an exception handler and any object may be used to represent an exception.

The system maintains the current exception handler as part of the dynamic environment of the program, akin to the current input or output port, or the context for dynamic-wind. The dynamic environment can be thought of as that part of a continuation that does not specify the destination of any returned values. It includes the current input and output ports, the dynamic-wind context, and this SRFI's current exception handler.

with-handler <handler> <expr1> ... <exprn> STKLOS Syntax
Evaluates the sequences of expressions <expr1> to <exprn>. <handler> must be a procedure that accepts one argument. It is installed as the current exception handler for the dynamic extent (as determined by dynamic-wind) of the evaluations of the expressions
          (with-handler (lambda (c)
                          (display "Catch an error\n"))
             (display "One ... ")
             (+ "will yield" "an error")
             (display "... Two"))
                 => displays "One ... Catch an error"
          

with-exception-handler <handler> <thunk> STKLOS Syntax
This form is similar to with-handler. It uses a thunk instead of a sequence of expressions. It is conform to SRFI-34. In fact,
          (with-handler <handler> <expr1> ... <exprn>)
          
is equivalent to
          (with-exception-handler <handler>
            (lambda () <expr1> ... <exprn>))
          

raise obj STKLOS Procedure
Invokes the current exception handler on obj. The handler is called in the dynamic environment of the call to raise, except that the current exception handler is that in place for the call to with-handler that installed the handler being called.
          (with-handler (lambda (c)
          		(format "value ~A was raised" c))
             (raise 'foo)
             (format #t "never printed\n"))
                    => "value foo was raised"
          

guard <var> <clause1 > <clause2 > ... <body> STKLOS Syntax
Evaluating a guard form evaluates <body> with an exception handler that binds the raised object to <var> and within the scope of that binding evaluates the clauses as if they were the clauses of a cond expression. That implicit cond expression is evaluated with the continuation and dynamic environment of the guard expression. If every <clause>'s test evaluates to false and there is no else clause, then raise is re-invoked on the raised object within the dynamic environment of the original call to raise except that the current exception handler is that of the guard expression.
          (guard (condition
                   ((assq 'a condition) => cdr)
                   ((assq 'b condition)))
            (raise (list (cons 'a 42))))
                   => 42
          
          (guard (condition
                   ((assq 'a condition) => cdr)
                   ((assq 'b condition)))
            (raise (list (cons 'b 23))))
                   => (b . 23)
          
          (with-handler (lambda (c) (format "value ~A was raised" c))
            (guard (condition
          	  ((assq 'a condition) => cdr)
          	  ((assq 'b condition)))
          	 (raise (list (cons 'x 0)))))
                   => "value ((x . 0)) was raised"
          

Conditions

[The following text is extracted from SRFI-35, from which STKLOS exceptions are derived]

Conditions are values that communicate information about exceptional situations between parts of a program. Code that detects an exception may be in a different part of the program than the code that handles it. In fact, the former may have been written independently from the latter. Consequently, to facilitate effective handling of exceptions, conditions must communicate as much information as possible as accurately as possible, and still allow effective handling by code that did not precisely anticipate the nature of the exception that occurred.

Conditions available in STKLOS are derived from SRFI-35 and in his SRFI two mechanisms to enable this kind of communication are provided:

Conditions are structures with named slots. Each condition belongs to one condition type (a condition type can be made from several condition types). Each condition type specifies a set of slot names. A condition belonging to a condition type includes a value for each of the type's slot names. These values can be extracted from the condition by using the appropriate slot name.

There is a tree of condition types with the distinguished &condition as its root. All other condition types have a parent condition type.

Conditions are implemented with STKLOS structures (with a special bit indicating that there are conditions). Of course, condition types are implemented with structure types. As a consequence, functions on structures or structures types are available on conditions or conditions types (the contrary is not true). For instance, if C is a condition, the expression

     (struct->list C)
     

is a simple way to see it's slots and their associated value.

make-condition-type id parent slot-names STKLOS Procedure
Make-condition-type returns a new condition type. Id must be a symbol that serves as a symbolic name for the condition type. Parent must itself be a condition type. Slot-names must be a list of symbols. It identifies the slots of the conditions associated with the condition type.

condition-type? obj STKLOS Procedure
Returns #t if obj is a condition type, and #f otherwise

make-compound-condition-type id ct1 ... STKLOS Procedure
Make-compound-condition-type returns a new condition type, built from the condition types ct1, ... Id must be a symbol that serves as a symbolic name for the condition type. The slots names of the new condition type is the union of the slots of conditions ct1 ...

Note: This function is not defined in SRFI-34.

make-condition type slot-name value ... STKLOS Procedure
Make-condition creates a condition value belonging condition type type. The following arguments must be, in turn, a slot name and an arbitrary value. There must be such a pair for each slot of type and its direct and indirect supertypes. Make-condition returns the condition value, with the argument values associated with their respective slots.
          (let* ((ct (make-condition-type 'ct1 &condition '(a b)))
                 (c  (make-condition ct 'b 2 'a 1)))
            (struct->list c))
               => ((a . 1) (b . 2))
          

condition? obj STKLOS Procedure
Returns #t if obj is a condition, and #f otherwise

condition-has-type? condition condition-type STKLOS Procedure
Condition-has-type? tests if condition belongs to condition-type. It returns #t if any of condition 's types includes condition-type either directly or as an ancestor and #f otherwise.
           (let* ((ct1 (make-condition-type 'ct1 &condition '(a b)))
                 (ct2 (make-condition-type 'ct2 ct1 '(c)))
                 (ct3 (make-condition-type 'ct3 &condition '(x y z)))
                 (c   (make-condition ct2 'a 1 'b 2 'c 3)))
            (list (condition-has-type? c ct1)
          	(condition-has-type? c ct2)
          	(condition-has-type? c ct3)))
              => (#t #t #f)
          

condition-ref condition slot-name STKLOS Procedure
Condition must be a condition, and slot-name a symbol. Moreover, condition must belong to a condition type which has a slot name called slot-name, or one of its (direct or indirect) supertypes must have the slot. Condition-ref returns the value associated with slot-name.
          (let* ((ct (make-condition-type 'ct1 &condition '(a b)))
                 (c  (make-condition ct 'b 2 'a 1)))
            (condition-ref c 'b))
               => 2
          

make-compound-condition condition0 condition1 ... STKLOS Procedure
Make-compound-condition returns a compound condition belonging to all condition types that the conditioni belong to.

Condition-ref, when applied to a compound condition will return the value from the first of the conditioni that has such a slot.

extract-condition condition condition-type STKLOS Procedure
Condition must be a condition belonging to condition-type. Extract-condition returns a condition of condition-type with the slot values specified by condition. The new condition is always allocated.
          (let* ((ct1 (make-condition-type 'ct1 &condition '(a b)))
                 (ct2 (make-condition-type 'ct2 ct1 '(c)))
                 (c2  (make-condition ct2 'a 1 ' b 2 'c 3))
                 (c1  (extract-condition c2 ct1)))
            (list (condition-has-type? c1 ct2)
          	(condition-has-type? c1 ct1)))
                => (#f #t)
          

Predefined conditions

STKLOS implement all the conditions types which are defined in SRFI-35 and SRFI-36. However, the access functions which are (implicitely) defined in those SRFIs are only available if the file "full-conditions.stk" is loaded. This can be done with the following call

     (require "full-conditions")
     

The following hierarchy of conditions is predefined:

     &condition
        &message (has "message" slot)
        &serious
        &error
           &error-message (has "message" and "location" slots)
           &i/o-error
              &i/o-port-error (has a "port" slot)
                 &i/o-read-error
                 &i/o-write-error
                 &i/o-closed-error
             &i/o-filename-error (has a "filename" slots)
                 &i/o-malformed-filename-error
                 &i/o-file-protection-error
                     &i/o-file-is-read-only-error
                 &i/o-file-already-exists-error
                 &i/o-no-such-file-error
          &read-error (has the "line", "column", "position" and "span" slots)