Origin of try/catch/finally syntax

Question

Question for the etymology wizards out there: which programming language was the first to use the try/catch/finally syntax found in today's Java/.NET languages?

Answer 1

I believe it was C++ and I think Java/C# added finally for resource cleanup (finally is not in C++). Unfortunately I have no references... yet.

Neat page of all the exception syntax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling_syntax

I believe it is C++. If its not then Stroustrup needs to give credit. In his paper: http://www.research.att.com/~bs/except.pdf He does not mention any influences and does not reference any other material other than his own.

Answer 2

Posted on Twitter by Mike Fikes, shared with me by Paweł Kapała:

MacLisp added the function ERR, which signals an error. If ERR is invoked within the dynamic context of an ERRSET form, then the argument to ERR is returned as the value of the ERRSET form.

Programmers soon began to use ERRSET and ERR not to trap and signal errors but for more general control purposes (dynamic non-local exits). Unfortunately, this use of ERRSET also quietly trapped unexpected errors, making programs harder to debug. A new pair of primitives, CATCH and THROW, was introduced into MacLisp in June 1972 [emphasis mine] so that ERRSET could be reserved for its intended use of error trapping.

The lesson of ERRSET and CATCH is important. The designers of ERRSET and later ERR had in mind a particular situation and defined a pair of primitives to address that situation. But because these facilities provided a combination of useful and powerful capabilities (error trapping plus dynamic non-local exits), programmers began to use these facilities in unintended ways. Then the designers had to go back and split the desired into pieces with alternative interfaces. This pattern of careful design, unintended use, and later redesign is common in the evolution of Lisp.

— from “The Evolution of Lisp,” by Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel

Source: https://twitter.com/mfikes/status/881943130588753920

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">“The Evolution of Lisp,” by Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel</p>&mdash; Mike Fikes (@mfikes) <a href="https://twitter.com/mfikes/status/881950560508940288">July 3, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Answer 3

Common Lisp predates C++ by a long time, and was based earlier Lisps. Java was, of course, created by Lisp men who were very aware of this. But Java is Lisp polluted by C, so they also added the checked exception specification nonsense.

Common Lisp went further and actually enabled the catch to interact with the throw routine, including to tell the throw to continue. The stack was simply not unwound until the catch was done. That meant you could throw warnings like low memory as well as throwing fails.