JDK 8 code review request for 7055295: (reflect) add conventional constructor to GenericSignatureFormatError

[Joe Darcy]

As chance would have it, I recently wrote myself a note for "audit 
constructor choices in JDK exceptions" as a possible little project for 
JDK 8.  I have also been annoyed by some missing exception constructors 
and I filled in one such omission in JDK 7, "6935997 Please add a nested 
throwable constructor to AssertionError."

So if we were to systematically to through and look to add all four 
constructors to all exception types in the JDK, then I agree 
GenericSignatureFormatError should have them too, but in the absence of 
that effort, I think just adding the constructor taking a string message 
is sufficient for now.

-Joe

On 6/16/2011 9:49 AM, Mike Duigou wrote:
> I guess that's what I should have suggested--that all exceptions/errors with public constructors should support all four of the standard constructors declared by 1.4+ Throwable. It's been occasionally annoying to use an exception class that's missing one or more of the standard constructors. It has usually been an exception class outside the JDK but it seems like a reasonable practice to include all four.
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Jun 16 2011, at 09:35 , Joe Darcy wrote:
>
>> On 6/16/2011 9:21 AM, Mike Duigou wrote:
>>> Perhaps the chained exception constructor would also be useful. I can imagine that whatever was parsing the signature might throw an exception with it's parse state that could then be captured (without needing to use initCause()) in the thrown GenericSignatureFormatError
>>>
>>> Mike
>> Hi Mike.
>>
>> At least as currently used in the JDK, the String constructor would suffice -- there are no causal exceptions in how the signature parser is coded.
>>
>> (If we were to add a third constructor taking a cause, we should also add a fourth constructor taking a cause and a message.)
>>
>> -Joe
>>