Re: try/catch macros for Postgres backend

tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us (Tom Lane) wrote:
> Does anyone have a problem with this macro syntax? The try/catch
> names are stolen from Java, so I'm figuring they won't terribly
> surprise any modern programmer, but I'm open to different names if
> anyone has a better idea.

Mitch Bradley, once of Sun, once founder of "Bradley ForthWorks," and
creator of the form of Forth used for the OpenBOOT standard, got it
introduced to ANSI Forth. I remember this being a pretty neat
addition to Forth back in the late '80s...

<http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/forth/euro/ef98/milendorf98.pdf>

That paper attributes it as having come from Lisp.

Java almost certainly "stole" it from Common Lisp, which took it from
MacLisp (albeit with changes in semantics).

Guy Steele, now a Sun Fellow, documents this in _Common Lisp, The
Language_ (2nd edition), section 7.11.

Python has it; Perl has an add-in; Ruby has it; Scheme has it
(possibly as an SRFI rather than in R?RS); Modula-3 has it (sans the
"catch" keyword), and the canonical reference, there, is by Harbison,
known to work with the very same Steele :-). Haskell hasn't a
"throw," but does have a "catch." OCAML has "raise" and "try," where
"catch" is implicit in the trying. ISO Prolog has catch/3 and
throw/1. Ada has "raise" and exception handlers...

I would therefore think that anything _other_ than this naming
convention would appear remarkable and surprising :-).
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