A Case for Automatic Exception Handling

Exception handling mechanisms have been around for more than 30 years. Nevertheless, modern exceptions systems are not very different from the early models. Programming languages designers often neglect the exception mechanism and look at it more like an add-on for their language instead of central part. As a consequence, software quality suffers as programmers feel that the task of writing good error handling code is too complex, unattractive and inefficient. We propose a new model that automates the handling of exceptions by the runtime platform. This model frees the programmer from having to write exception handling code and, at the same time, successfully increases the resilience of programs to abnormal situations. 1