Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!encore!cloud9!cme
From: encore!cloud9!cme@seismo.css.gov (Carl Ellison)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: Exception Handling in Dataflow Languages?
Summary: no problem
Message-ID: <3933@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 19 Dec 88 13:18:33 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.UUCP
Lines: 18
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

In article <3883@hubcap.UUCP>, jwb@cive.ri.cmu.edu (John Baugh) writes:
> Do dataflow (and/or functional) languages provide exception
> handling mechanisms, or is this considered a no-no?  The
> software engineering people advocate their use, but I haven't
> seen this kind of support in dataflow languages.


The only problem with this idea is that the word "exception" isn't defined.
That's a concept invented by programmers of von Neumann machines to talk about
things which happened asynchronously (therefore not in the flow of a single-
thread program).  In other words, an "exception" is the arrival of a dataflow
datum at a von Neumann processor.  When that datum arrives at a dataflow
processor, it rates no special label.


--Carl Ellison          ...!harvard!anvil!es!cme    (normal mail address)
                        ...!ulowell!cloud9!cme      (usenet news reading)
(standard disclaimer)