stack traces are evil (was: Re: Crystal Reports / PostgreSQL)

On Thursday 10 February 2005 16:08, Oliver Jowett wrote:
> > Any ad-hoc parsing is easy to get wrong by forgetting corner
> > cases.  I'm not saying it can't be done correctly, just that we
> > shouldn't bother.
>
> Especially given that different JVMs format stack traces
> differently, and Throwable.getStackTrace() is allowed to omit stack
> frames.

You're right as usual.

Here's a somewhat off-topic example of when relying on stack traces
backfires:

  http://weblog.ikvm.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=245f4ca5-0512-4e66-a6c6-fa4d4af697ef