It is interesting that you picked Java/C# and "they consider "this file does not exist" as an exception". Firstly, I know more about Java. It is not an exception when testing for the existance of a file that does not exist. However, it is an exception to attempt to open a file (for reading) that does not exist. Also, for those unaware, exception class FileNotFoundException is a subclass of IOException, which is "checked" and cannot be ignored. However, when calling the C function "open" (or "fopen") to open a file, the programmer can easily forget to check the return value. This is harder to do in Java, thanks to the checked exception.

Here is some sample Java code to demonstrate:

    > try {
    >     FileReader reader = new FileReader("file.txt");
    >     // Use 'reader' here.
    > } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    >     // ...
    > }

How do you propose to change class FileReader such that it will not throw an exception if the file does not exist?

    > To circumvent this, a lot of exception languages are written in a more defensive style.

I don't understand this comment. Can you provide some examples?