The philosophy of Nothing

[Per Bothner]

On 11/29/2009 06:14 PM, Paul Benedict wrote:
1) Does the Java compiler have to prove a method can never return normally?

It should be (and can easily be) integrated with unreachable-code
analysis.

> 2) What is the benefit of telling the compiler the method *must* throw
> an Exception?

The useful case, I believe, is specifying that a method never
returns "normally" - i.e. it either throws an exception *or*
loops forever.  Thus any code following a call to such a
method is by definition unreachable.

public Nothing throwMe(RuntimeException t) {
     throw t;
}
public void doit() {
    throwMe(...);
    // unreachable here
    do_something(); // hence this is an error
}
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per at bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/