Exercises
Exception Handling

9.1   Exceptions in Convert.ToDouble  

The static methods in the static class System.Convert are able to convert values of one type to values of another type. Consult the documentation of System.Convert.ToDouble. There are several overloads of this method. Which exceptions can occur by converting a string to a double? Write a program which triggers these exceptions. Finally, supply handlers of the exceptions. The handlers should report the problem on standard output, rethrow the exception, and then continue.

 

Solution

9.2   Exceptions in class Stack  

In the lecture about inheritance we specialized the abstract class Stack. Now introduce exception handling in your non-abstract specialization of Stack. I suggest that you refine your own solution to the previous exercise. It is also possible to refine my solution. More specifically, introduce one or more stack-related exception classes. The slide page "Raising and throwing exceptions in C#" tells you how to do it. Make sure to specialize the appropriate pre-existing exception class! Arrange that Push on a full stack and that Pop/Top on an empty stack throw one of the new exceptions. Also, in the abstract stack class, make sure that ToggleTop throws an exception if the stack is empty, or if the stack only contains a single element. Finally, in a sample client program such as this one, handle the exceptions that are thrown. In this exercises it is sufficient to report the errors on standard output.

 

Solution

9.3   More exceptions in class Stack  

In continuation of the previous exercise, we now wish to introduce the following somewhat unconventional handling of stack exceptions: If you push an element on a full stack throw half of the elements away, and carry out the pushing. If you pop/top an empty stack, push three dummy elements on the stack, and do the pop/top operation after this. With these ideas, most stack programs will be able to terminate normally (run to the end). I suggest that you introduce yet another specialization of the stack class, which specializes Push, Pop, and Top. The specialized stack operations should handle relevant stack-related exceptions, and delegate the real work to its superclass. Thus, in the specialized stack class, each stack operation, such as Push, you should embed base.push(el) in a try-catch control structure, which repairs the stack - as suggested above - in the catch clause.

 

Solution

9.4   Revealing the propagation of exceptions  

We have written a program that reveals how exceptions are propagated. In the program output, we see that the calling chain is Main, M, N, P. The program output does not, however, reveal that the chain is followed in reverse order in an attempt to find an appropriate exception handler. Revise the program with handlers in M, N, and P that touch the exception without actually handling it. The handlers should reveal, on standard output, that P, N, and M are passed in an attempt to locate a relevant exception handler. Rethrow the exception in each case. See here how this can be done.

 

Solution

Generated: Monday February 7, 2011, 12:19:03