Exception Handling in Fortran

Abstract

Objections have been raised to block-structured exception handling, usually citing performance degradation. While some implementations of block-structured exception handling impose expense even if an exception does not occur, block-structured exception handling does not inevitably impose a significant execution-time penalty if an exception does not occur. For example, the Janus Ada compiler’s block-structured exception handling mechanism imposes very low cost if an exception does not occur, and the exception handling mechanism provided by the GNU Ada Translator (GNAT) imposes zero cost if an exception does not occur.