Exception guidelines

Exception guidelines

1. Handle problems at the appropriate level. (Avoid catching exceptions unless you know what to do with them).
2. Fix the problem and call the method that caused the exception again.
3. Patch things up and continue without retrying the method.
4. Calculate some alternative result instead of what the method was supposed to produce.
5. Do whatever you can in the current context and rethrow the same exception to a higher context.
6. Do whatever you can in the current context and throw a different exception to a higher context.
7. Terminate the program.
8. Simplify. (If your exception scheme makes things more complicated, then it is painful and annoying to use.)
9. Make your library and program safer. (This is a short-term investment for debugging, and a long-term investment for application robustness.)