> Sorry, but it is not a game, it is a convention that afaik holds true for ALL languages that use exceptions. Using exceptions for control flow is widely accepted as a code smell.
Unless using exceptions either hinders performance(they are expensive but I am yet to see a case where it matters), or makes the control flow incomprehensible, it doesn't matter what is widely accepted. I need a reason for "don't use exceptions because...", and "exceptions for exceptional conditions" or "just because it's widely accepted" doesn't cut it.
I am pretty sure you have very strong opinions about goto as well, which I use a lot when using C. It's simply the cleanest way to directly jump to the cleaner instead of convoluting the flow with non-needed flags. Since you are placing much weight on what others deem acceptable, you can look at linux kernel code and Steven's code in Unix Network Programming.
Also, exceptions are control flow in every sense of the word, though non-local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_flow#Exceptions. I don't know where the notion of exceptions not being control flow came from. Among other examples of exceptions for control flow, Python and Ruby raise StopIteration in their iteration protocol. And in Python, exceptions aren't that much costly.
Unless using exceptions either hinders performance(they are expensive but I am yet to see a case where it matters), or makes the control flow incomprehensible, it doesn't matter what is widely accepted. I need a reason for "don't use exceptions because...", and "exceptions for exceptional conditions" or "just because it's widely accepted" doesn't cut it.
I am pretty sure you have very strong opinions about goto as well, which I use a lot when using C. It's simply the cleanest way to directly jump to the cleaner instead of convoluting the flow with non-needed flags. Since you are placing much weight on what others deem acceptable, you can look at linux kernel code and Steven's code in Unix Network Programming.
Also, exceptions are control flow in every sense of the word, though non-local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_flow#Exceptions. I don't know where the notion of exceptions not being control flow came from. Among other examples of exceptions for control flow, Python and Ruby raise StopIteration in their iteration protocol. And in Python, exceptions aren't that much costly.