fp.

  I personally prefer to make the error state part of the objects: Streams can be in an error state, floats can be NaN and integers should be low(int) if they are invalid (low(int) is a pointless value anyway as it has no positive equivalent).

It's fine to pick sentinel values for errors in context, but describing 0x80000000 as "pointless" in general with such a weak justification doesn't inspire confidence.

ratmice•4m ago

Without the low int the even/odd theorem falls apart for wrap around I've definitely seen algorithms that rely upon that.

I would agree, whether error values are in or out of band is pretty context dependent such as whether you answered a homework question wrong, or your dog ate it. One is not a condition that can be graded.

kbd•12m ago

The biggest thing I still don’t like about Nim is its imports:

    import std/errorcodes

    proc p(x: int) {.raises.} =
      if x < 0:
        raise ErrorCode.RangeError
      use x

I can’t stand that there’s no direct connection between the thing you import and the names that wind up in your namespace.

xigoi•8m ago

It needs to be this way so that UFCS works properly. Imagine if instead of "a,b".split(','), you had to write "a,b".(strutils.split)(',').