7. Exceptions

In programming based on abstract types, operators on these types must guard against abnormal use (for example, unstacking an empty stack). In this case, the user must be warned that the operation could not be performed. Terminating the program (with functions such as assert, § 2.4 ) is often too drastic. Simply giving an error code, as in C, is not very robust, as it requires the user to test this code after each operator use. This is not conducive to code readability and is...