[jira] [Commented] (IO-814) FileUtils.deleteDirectory can throw UncheckedIOException

["Gilles Sadowski (Jira)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IO-814?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=17771526#comment-17771526 ] 

Gilles Sadowski commented on IO-814:
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bq. This was a behavior breaking change, [...]

There is no denying that it is not nice to users who relied on the previous behaviour.

bq. [...] an incorrect one to boot.

Although it could/should have occurred in a new major version, it is not incorrect if one assumes that the API should switch to not using checked exceptions.

bq. Operations that can have I/O errors should throw IOException if they can't directly handle the I/O error.

As discussed previously, there is no agreement on when to use a checked exception. IMHO, checked exceptions bring (much) more pain than (supposed) robustness.

bq. UncheckedIOException is not a reasonable alternative.

Why was it introduced in the JDK?

bq. A method that can neither handle nor throw IOException must not perform I/O operations.

A developer could decide to never use checked exceptions; writing a program will still be possible.
Some programming languages even made that decision for all developers. ;-)

bq. It's worth noting that functional programming, not just in Java but in general, does not allow I/O. As soon as a method performs I/O, it's no longer a pure function and should not be written in a functional style.

Such a rule could indeed be useful to limit the trend that everything is "forced" into functional style seemingly to save a couple of lines (while a side-effect is often that it becomes much less readable).


> FileUtils.deleteDirectory can throw UncheckedIOException
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: IO-814
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IO-814
>             Project: Commons IO
>          Issue Type: Bug
>    Affects Versions: 2.13.0, 2.14.0
>            Reporter: Elliotte Rusty Harold
>            Priority: Critical
>
> This was a behavior breaking change, and an incorrect one to boot. 
> Operations that can have I/O errors should throw IOException if they can't directly handle the I/O error. UncheckedIOException is not a reasonable alternative.
> A method that can neither handle nor throw IOException must not perform I/O operations.
> It's worth noting that functional programming, not just in Java but in general, does not allow I/O. As soon as a method performs I/O, it's no longer a pure function and should not be written in a functional style. 



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