Error handling (was Re: "nan" v. try-catch for arithmetic)

[Richard Gaskin]

J. Landman Gay wrote:
 > On 6/24/2014, 1:02 PM, Graham Samuel wrote:
 >> I get a result, "nan", and the catch doesn't fire. Why not? Maybe
 >> someone can explain what the engine is doing here - or is it just an
 >> obscure bug?
 >
 > A "catch" only triggers when there is a script error. In this case
 > there is no error, "nan" is a legitimate value for a calculation
 > that can't be computed.

This conversation raises a broader issue that's concerned me for some 
time, and I'm hoping I've just overlooked some rule at play that would 
make things more readily understandable:

How can a scripter know in advance which commands require try-catch to 
handle errors and which require checking the result?

For example:

decompress and arrayDecode require try-catch, throwing an execution 
error if the data passed to them is not in the expected format.

But decrypt throws no execution error at all when unencrypted data is 
passed, instead describing that there is a problem in the result.


Is there a simple rule that would allow scripters to understand when 
try-catch is necessary and when the result should be checked instead?

If not, should there be?

Or perhaps better yet, could error handling be made uniform, maybe as 
part of the Open Language initiative?  If so, what would it look like?

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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