From: Peter Hickman <peter@...>
Date: 2002-07-08T22:05:34+09:00
Subject: Re: How to determine EOF with sysread?

Austin Ziegler wrote:

>On Mon, 8 Jul 2002 14:47:25 +0900, Sean Chittenden wrote:
>
>>>Thanks all for the answers. Does it strike anyone as bad practice
>>>to use a rescue for control flow? I thought a more explicit test
>>>method would have been provided.
>>>
>>My C roots tell me, yes, but my Ruby roots tell me no. Having an
>>exception thrown/caught is okay practice in Ruby.
>>
>
>It still seems wrong to me, since an end of file condition is an
>expected situation, not an exceptional situation.
>
>*shrug*
>
>-austin
>-- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.07.08 at 08.39.15
>

But eof is the exception when reading a file, because a read will 
usually succeed.
This sort of thing is used a lot on VAXes (if they still exist) and 
early mini / mainframe designs.

I expect programs to have bugs, but I can't predict what and where or I 
would have written the program differently. Therefore they are 
exceptions even though they are expected.