[Edu-sig] Re: What do files and exceptions have in common?

[Scott David Daniels]

Kent Johnson wrote:
> Still prepping for my files class. The chapter in Dawson is "Files and 
> Exceptions". I think that is a little strange; what do files and 
> exceptions have to do with each other, pedagogically? None of the file 
> examples even use exceptions, and few of the exceptions examples use files.

I suspect the reason is that coping with files brings unavoidable
errors in from the environment.  Anyone who writes any file I/O
code will find examples failing for OS- and current file system-
specific behavior.  You'll have to answer these questions at some
point, so why not provide something they want to do (file I/O) at
the same time as you talk about how to cope with various failures
(which, on its own, sounds like a dry subject).

-- 
-- Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org