Re: Splitting foreign-error:code for SRFI 198, Foreign Errors
Lassi Kortela 27 Jul 2020 23:59 UTC
> +1. It also makes matters extensible, which having a fixed collection
> of functions does not.
Concurred, extensibility is needed in any case.
> The standard keys, however, should be documented
> in the SRFI with generic explanations.
+1. Also any extra ones beyond those discussed in the SRFI should be
documented in the error-set registry.
> But they can be
> discovered simply by triggering an error in a REPL and noting all the
> keys in foreign-error:code.
>
> I want to register my continuing objection to reflective functions in
> this SRFI, particularly since they may return an unexpectedly large or
> small amount of information. Rather than having functions that return
> "some of the error-sets / errors / whatever", stick to specific
> handling. These lists are going to be unstable anyhow.
It's a good question how we should combine printing error objects from
the REPL with lazy-loaded error information. Should the printer
lazy-load anything at all? It could be expensive or fail.
In case you count error-set enumeration as a reflection, Oracle has
about 37 thousand errors!
<https://docs.oracle.com/pls/db92/db92.error_search?prefill=ORA->.
> Another advantage is that having foreign-error:code fan out into an
> alist doesn't require us *today* to anticipate every possible way
> an error can be classified.
The same benefit can be had if we use one flat alist instead of an extra
nested alist for `code`.
> There are indeed systems that group errors into classes. Historically
> this has been done by having a common prefix to the key. Consider the
> first digit of an HTTP return message, for example.
True. How would we represent 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx as classes? FTP and IRC
have a similar numbering scheme if memory serves.