Aspect-oriented programming systems such as AspectJ provide mechanisms for modularizing crosscutting error-handling concerns. However, AspectJ's advice does not integrate well with Java's checked exception mechanism. Furthermore, conventional exception-handling facilities such as AspectJ's share the problem of accidental exception capture due to the dynamic nature of exception-handling semantics.

We propose statically-scoped exceptions as an alternative mechanism for error-handling. In our system, a thrown exception is caught by the nearest lexically-enclosing exception handler, rather than the nearest handler on the call stack. Using static scoping allows us to achieve better modularization, as with AspectJ, and also precudes the problem of exception capture. We provide a static type system that tracks exceptions precisely and ensures that statically-scoped exceptions cannot be misused to cause continuation-like behavior. We hope that our system will serve as a foundation for error handling mechanisms that combine good modularization with strong static reasoning about errors.

10 pages

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