From: Daniel Berger <djberge@...>
Date: 2002-09-13T12:06:35+09:00
Subject: Disabling exceptions - thoughts?

Hi all,

On #ruby-lang tonight, the topic of disabling exceptions came up.  In Perl, 
for example, you can temporarily (or permanately) disable particular (or all) 
warnings via a "no warnings" pragma.  I'm told CommonLisp also has something 
along these lines.

Ignoring the "is it wise" for the moment, is it *possible* to disable 
exceptions in Ruby?  i.e. something along the lines of:

Errno::EEXIST.ignore # ignore exception globally
Errno::EEXIST.ignore{...} # ignore exception for block only

I know there are questions:

"What about classes/modules that expect those exceptions to be defined?" 

"Could we use file scope via __FILE__"?

"Wouldn't a no-op work just as well?"

"Is this even possible in the current version of Ruby?"

I don't know the answer to any of the above questions, and I'm sure there are 
even more questions than I'm listing.

But, that's why I'm asking you all. :)

Regards,

Dan

PS - Some parts of this message inspired/stolen from seanc, matju and 
zenspider