https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/221
The current terminology of "task failure" often causes problems when
writing or speaking about code. You often want to talk about the
possibility of an operation that returns a Result "failing", but cannot
because of the ambiguity with task failure. Instead, you have to speak
of "the failing case" or "when the operation does not succeed" or other
circumlocutions.
Likewise, we use a "Failure" header in rustdoc to describe when
operations may fail the task, but it would often be helpful to separate
out a section describing the "Err-producing" case.
We have been steadily moving away from task failure and toward Result as
an error-handling mechanism, so we should optimize our terminology
accordingly: Result-producing functions should be easy to describe.
To update your code, rename any call to `fail!` to `panic!` instead.
Assuming you have not created your own macro named `panic!`, this
will work on UNIX based systems:
grep -lZR 'fail!' . | xargs -0 -l sed -i -e 's/fail!/panic!/g'
You can of course also do this by hand.
[breaking-change]
for `~str`/`~[]`.
Note that `~self` still remains, since I forgot to add support for
`Box<self>` before the snapshot.
How to update your code:
* Instead of `~EXPR`, you should write `box EXPR`.
* Instead of `~TYPE`, you should write `Box<Type>`.
* Instead of `~PATTERN`, you should write `box PATTERN`.
[breaking-change]
fail!() used to require owned strings but can handle static strings
now. Also, it can pass its arguments to fmt!() on its own, no need for
the caller to call fmt!() itself.
