Re: [Vala] "checked vs unchecked exceptions" && API design guidelines for Vala

[Martin Olsson <mnemo minimum se>]

Thomas Chust wrote:
> My personal opinion is that no matter what type of exceptions is used,
> your alternative #3 is the most readable and logical way of doing it,
> since peeking at an empty stack is not really an error of any kind. A
> peek operation is precisely intended to check whether something is empty
> and to possibly also return an element if it is not. This should be
> represented by an appropriate return type, for example with a boolean
> return and an output parameter or with a polymorphic return type that
> can either hold a value or represent the absence of one.

Thanks for the reply (and also thanks to Fredrik), both replies made
excellent points and I certainly understand this issue more in depth now.

In the end I opted for alternative #3 and besides your arguments
I also noted that this alternative makes it possible to implement the
API in a thread safe way should this be desired. There will always be
a potential race between checking .Length and doing .peek() so it
seems like a good habit to favor trypeek instead of peek by default.


                Martin