Just a Theory

Trans rights are human rights

Trying Times

Exception handling is a bit of a pain in Perl. Traditionally, we use eval {}:

eval {
    foo();
}
if (my $err = $@) {
    # Inspect $err…
}

The use of the if block is a bit unfortunate; worse is the use of the global $@ variable, which has inflicted unwarranted pain on developers over the years.1 Many Perl hackers put Try::Tiny to work to circumvent these shortcomings:

try {
    foo();
} catch {
    # Inspect $_…
};

Alas, Try::Tiny introduces its own idiosyncrasies, particularly its use of subroutine references rather than blocks. While a necessity of a pure-Perl implementation, it prevents returning from the calling context. One must work around this deficiency by checking return values:

my $rv = try {
   f();
} catch {
   # …
};

if (!$rv) {
   return;
}

I can’t tell you how often this quirk burns me.

Sadly, there is a deeper problem then syntax: Just what, exactly, is an exception? How does one determine the exceptional condition, and what can be done about it? It might be a string. The string might be localized. It might be an Exception::Class object, or a Throwable object, or a simple array reference. Or any other value a Perl scalar can hold. This lack of specificity requires careful handling of exceptions:

if (my $err = $@) {
    if (ref $err) {
        if (eval { $err->isa('Exception::Class') }) {
            if ( $err->isa('SomeException') ) {
                # …
            } elsif ( $err->isa('SomeException') ) {
                # …
            } else {
                # …
            }
        } elsif (eval { $err->DOES('Throwable') }) {
            # …
        } elsif ( ref $err eq 'ARRAY') {
            # …
        }
    } else {
        if ( $err =~ /DBI/ ) {
            # …
        } elsif ( $err =~ /cannot open '([^']+)'/ ) {
            # …
        }
    }
}

Not every exception handler requires so many conditions, but I have certainly exercised all these approaches. Usually my exception handlers accrete condition as users report new, unexpected errors.

That’s not all. My code frequently requires parsing information out of a string error. Here’s an example from PGXN::Manager:

try {
    $self->distmeta(decode_json scalar $member->contents );
} catch {
    my $f = quotemeta __FILE__;
    (my $err = $_) =~ s/\s+at\s+$f.+//ms;
    $self->error([
        'Cannot parse JSON from “[_1]”: [_2]',
        $member->fileName,
        $err
    ]);
    return;
} or return;

return $self;

When JSON throws an exception on invalid JSON, the code must catch that exception to show the user. The user cares not at all what file threw the exception, nor the line number. The code must strip that stuff out before passing the original message off to a localizing error method.

Gross.

It’s time to end this. A forthcoming post will propose a plan for adding proper exception handling to the core Perl language, including exception objects and an official try/catch syntax.


  1. In fairness much of the $@ pain has been addressed in Perl 5.14↩︎