[I assume you posted an off-topic comment because there was no logical place to post it, and no contact page for for sending me messages in general - I've now fixed this, you many notice a contact option has appeared on the main menue!]

Unfortunately my Java knowledge is very rusty, and my understanding of the throw spec issues in Java is pretty much nebulous

C++ however - as you (Alan) know - is a very different matter! Thanks for the suggestion. It may be a few days before the article appears, but I’ll start work on it!

- Mark.

Throw specifications in C++ and exception specifications in Java are very different beasts and treating them in the same article would only have value if the purpose were to explain the differences. That has been done.

In terms of utility I don’t know of anyone that would argue the C++ version is anything other than a failed experiement. In Java the case is less clear as there are some benefits. (Although it is telling that no comparable, subsequent language has adopted this approach.)

Sorry about the delay in responding, and yes that is more than a little worrying!

I see your code base is C++. Are you suggesting an article about throw specs in C++ or are you suggesing one that includes Java?

- Mark.

grep “throw[^[:graph:]]*([^)]” `find -name \*.cpp -or -name \*.h` | wc -l
222

How about writing “The Only Good throw spec is an Empty One”?

Thanks for pointing out these things. I didn’t know about JUnit being inspired by SUnit. Actually I hadn’t heard of SUnit until your comment. I assumed Smalltalkers would have a unit test framework, so I probably should have looked it up and included it in the above article - I’ll append an update with a link to it.

Re your comment that JUnit “doesn’t fit well with Java idioms”. I don’t know much about Java, but that did surprise me! Could you elaborate a little if/when you get chance? In what way is/was JUnit counter-idiomatic in Java, and how could it work such that it does fit with Java idioms?

- Mark.