[geos-devel] GEOS Exceptions

[Artem Pavlenko]

>The exceptions thing isn't too egregious.  I don't think it's a deal
>breaker with regards to deciding to use GEOS.  I'm guessing that many
>users are unaware of the exception interface until one happens to get
>thrown.  (Which looks like may have happened to Frank.  It's certainly
>what happened to me.  And my efforts were more to get more useful
>debugging information than improving GEOS design and implementation. 
>Inheriting from std::exception provided a bit more debugging
>information.)
>
I see GEOS as a development platform used by developers, and 'c++ style' 
currently at large would certainly raise concerns among many  (IMHO). 
Exceptions are just one example.

>What does MFC have to do with GEOS?  
>  
>
MFC is (was?) (in)famously throwing exceptions by pointer, AFAIK :)
(pre standard C++) - I was joking :(

>Actually, does anyone use MFC?   (On purpose?)
>  
>

I hope not

>
>Again, though I urged making the aforementioned changes sooner than
>later for pragmatic reasons, the exception interface isn't bad enough
>to scare off people, especially given that most  probably won't notice
>the exceptions until they're thrown.  (And then, sadly, most of them
>might not know why throwing pointers to exception objects is a badism
>and that there even exists an exception class hierarchy in the ISO
>Standard C++ Library.) 
>

> GEOS happens to fill a much needed niche for a
>C++ geospatial library; some might be so happy that one even exists
>that they might not pay attention to the details.
>  
>
Yes, of course, but we should have 'the best' as free software often is 
in many other areas.

>
>I've looked at the Boost Spirit parser before and thought it was a
>neat idea.  I thought it would be a great way to implement a WKT
>parser.  You'd probably get some performance boost.  (No pun
>intended!)  At the very least the code should (hopefully) be easier to
>read, understand, and maintain.
>
>  Have you done any empirical
>measurement to note any significant performance differences between
>the old and new parsers?
>
>  
>
Nope, but I will at some point. Are there any test WKT datasets I could 
try? Also I load WKT into my geometry model which is different from GEOS. 

Also proper grammar based approach can be a winner for CS WKT?

Cheers
Artem