On exceptions as first-class objects in Ada 95

Abstract

This short position paper argues that it might be beneficial to try to bring the exception model of Ada 95 more in-line with the object-oriented model of programming. In particular, it is felt that exceptions --- being such an important concept for the development of fault-tolerant software --- have deserved a promotion to first-class objects of the language. It is proposed to resolve the somewhat awkward dichotomy of exceptions and exception occurrences as it exists now in Ada 95 by treating exceptions as (tagged) types, and exception occurrences as their instances.