Question

When using a language that has try/catch/finally, are D’s failure/success/exit scope statements still useful? D doesn’t seem to have finally which may explain why those statements are used in D. But with a language like C# is it useful? I am designing a language so if I see many pros I’ll add it in.

Answer 1

scope(X) isn’t necessary in the same way that for isn’t necessary provided you have if and goto.

Here’s a paraphrased example from some code I’ve been writing today:

sqlite3* db;
sqlite3_open("some.db", &db);
scope(exit) sqlite3_close(db);

sqlite3_stmt* stmt;
sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, "SELECT * FROM foo;", &stmt);
scope(exit) sqlite3_finalize(stmt);

// Lots of stuff...

scope(failure) rollback_to(current_state);
make_changes_with(stmt);

// More stuff...

return;

Contrast this to using try/catch:

sqlite3* db;
sqlite3_open("some.db", &db);
try
{
    sqlite3_stmt* stmt;
    sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, "SELECT * FROM foo;", &stmt);
    try
    {
        // Lots of stuff...
        try
        {
            make_changes_with(stmt);

            // More stuff...
        }
        catch( Exception e )
        {
            rollback_to(current_state);
            throw;
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
    }
}
finally
{
    sqlite3_close(db);
}

The code has turned into spaghetti, spreading the error recovery all over the shop and forcing a level of indentation for every try block. The version using scope(X) is, in my opinion, significantly more readable and easier to understand.