Exception handling refactorings: Directed by goals and driven by bug fixing

Chen, Chien-Tsun; Cheng, Yu Chin; Hsieh, Chin-Yun; Wu, I-Lang

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2008.06.035

“…Exception handling features, such as throw statements and try-catch-finally blocks, are widely used in modern programming languages. These features separate error-handling code from regular code and are proven to enhance the practice of software reliability, comprehension, and maintenance [1], [2]. On the other hand, the misuse of exception handling features can cause catastrophic failures [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the Prevalence of Exception Handling Anti-Patterns

Pádua

¹

,

Shang

²

2017

2017 IEEE/ACM 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)

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Modern programming languages, such as Java and C#, typically provide features that handle exceptions. These features separate error-handling code from regular source code and are proven to enhance the practice of software reliability, comprehension, and maintenance. Having acknowledged the advantages of exception handling features, the misuse of them can still cause catastrophic software failures, such as application crash. Prior studies suggested anti-patterns of exception handling; while little knowledge was shared about the prevalence of these anti-patterns. In this paper, we investigate the prevalence of exception-handling anti-patterns. We collected a thorough list of exception anti-patterns from 16 open-source Java and C# libraries and applications using an automated exception flow analysis tool. We found that although exception handling antipatterns widely exist in all of our subjects, only a few antipatterns (e.g. Unhandled Exceptions, Catch Generic, Unreachable Handler, Over-catch, and Destructive Wrapping) can be commonly identified. On the other hand, we find that the prevalence of antipatterns illustrates differences between C# and Java. Our results call for further in-depth analyses on the exception handling practices across different languages.

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“…2) Exception handling code analysis: Several works [31], [36]- [44] analyzed Java source code or Java bytecode through Static Analysis to identify and classify patterns in the exception handling code. The analyzed data ranges from simple code metrics, such as number of throw statements and catch blocks to complex data-flow analysis results such as the number of exceptional flows.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unveiling Exception Handling Guidelines Adopted by Java Developers

Melo

¹

,

Coelho

²

2019

2019 IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)

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Despite being an old language feature, Java exception handling code is one of the least understood parts of many systems. Several studies have analyzed the characteristics of exception handling code, trying to identify common practices or even link such practices to software bugs. Few works, however, have investigated exception handling issues from the point of view of developers. None of the works have focused on discovering exception handling guidelines adopted by current systemswhich are likely to be a driver of common practices. In this work, we conducted a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and a survey whose goal was to investigate the guidelines that are (or should be) followed by developers in their projects. Initially, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven experienced developers, which were used to inform the design of a survey targeting a broader group of Java developers (i.e., a group of active Java developers from topstarred projects on GitHub). We emailed 863 developers and received 98 valid answers. The study shows that exception handling guidelines usually exist (70%) and are usually implicit and undocumented (54%). Our study identifies 48 exception handling guidelines related to seven different categories. We also investigated how such guidelines are disseminated to the project team and how compliance between code and guidelines is verified; we could observe that according to more than half of respondents the guidelines are both disseminated and verified through code inspection or code review. Our findings provide software development teams with a means to improve exception handling guidelines based on insights from the state of practice of 87 software projects.

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“…Sinha et al [20] leveraged exception flow analyses to study the existence of 11 anti-patterns in four Java systems. Other research [2], [8], [7] classified exception-handling related bugs by mining software issue tracking. In our previous research, we observe the prevalence of exception handling anti-patterns [13].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Modern programming languages, such as Java and C#, typically provide exception handling features, such as throw statements and try-catch-finally blocks. These features separate error-handling code from regular source code and are leveraged widely in practice to support software comprehension and maintenance [1], [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Exception Handling Practices with Exception Flow Analysis

Pádua

¹

,

Shang

²

2017

2017 IEEE 17th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)

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Modern programming languages, such as Java and C#, typically provide features that handle exceptions. These features separate error-handling code from regular source code and aim to assist in the practice of software comprehension and maintenance. Having acknowledged the advantages of exception handling features, their misuse can still cause reliability degradation or even catastrophic software failures. Prior studies on exception handling aim to understand the practices of exception handling in its different components, such as the origin of the exceptions and the handling code of the exceptions. Yet, the observed findings were scattered and diverse. In this paper, to complement prior research findings on exception handling, we study its features by enriching the knowledge of handling code with a flow analysis of exceptions. Our case study is conducted with over 10K exception handling blocks, and over 77K related exception flows from 16 open-source Java and C# (.NET) libraries and applications. Our case study results show that each try block has up to 12 possible potentially recoverable yet propagated exceptions. More importantly, 22% of the distinct possible exceptions can be traced back to multiple methods (average of 1.39 and max of 34). Such results highlight the additional challenge of composing quality exception handling code. To make it worse, we confirm that there is a lack of documentation of the possible exceptions and their sources. However, such critical information can be identified by exception flow analysis on welldocumented API calls (e.g., JRE and .NET documentation). Finally, we observe different strategies in exception handling code between Java and C#. Our findings highlight the opportunities of leveraging automated software analysis to assist in exception handling practices and signify the need of more further in-depth studies on exception handling practice.

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Exception handling refactorings: Directed by goals and driven by bug fixing

Cited by 23 publications

References 12 publications

Studying the Prevalence of Exception Handling Anti-Patterns

Studying the Prevalence of Exception Handling Anti-Patterns

Unveiling Exception Handling Guidelines Adopted by Java Developers

Revisiting Exception Handling Practices with Exception Flow Analysis

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