From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2006-12-12T01:05:03+09:00
Subject: Re: else inside rescue is useless?

On 12/11/06, cap <capitain@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0672328844&rl=1
>
> The "The ruby way" book said
>
> [quote]
> In the event that error types are specified, it may be that an
> exception does not match any of these types. For that situation, we are
> allowed to use an else clause after all the rescue clauses.
>
> begin
>   # Error-prone code...
> rescue Type1
>   # ...
> rescue Type2
>   # ...
> else
>   # Other exceptions...
> end
>
> [/quote]
>
> but actually, I found the "else" clause is only executed when there is
> no exception been thrown,such as :
>
> -------------------------
> begin
>     puts "do something"
> rescue NameError
>     puts "name error  #{$!}"
> else
>     puts "else  #{$!}"
> end
> --------------------------
>
> the result is
>
> -------------------
> do something
> else
> ------------------
>
> so the "else" clause is useless because we can simply put the content
> of "else" caluse to the last line in the "begin" block before the first
> "rescue"
>
> Am I wrong or the book is wrong?
>
> my ruby version is
>  ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i686-linux]
>
>
>

From the Rubinius test suite:
    @count = 1
    begin
      p @count
      raise ArgumentError, 'just kidding' unless @count > 3
    rescue Exception => e
      @count += 1
      retry
    else
      p 7
    ensure
      p 8
    end

this prints:
1
2
3
4
7
8

'else' only runs if no exception was raised.