I don't agree that panics are exactly equivalent to exceptions in languages like Java or Python because the language doesn't support using them as a general purpose error handling technique by providing `try/catch/finally` or by documenting what exceptions may be thrown with `throws`. I agree that the implementation of unwinding is similar in both cases, but I'd argue that that's not sufficient in practice to be able to apply knowledge about the usage of exceptions in, say, Java to the usage of panics in Rust.

I'm aware of catch-panic and the unwinding related to panics. Nevertheless, the vast majority of panic usage I've seen is related to the semantic that a panic signals an error that is fatal to the context of the panic. (This is a more nuanced view of panics that didn't exist in my previous post.)

Yes, you can use catch-panic on a server that is meant to stay up even if one of its threads panics. Or you can replace unwinding with aborting to save on code size. But idiomatic Rust code doesn't use panics simply to signal to a caller that some sort of typical error occurred like a file not existing.

Edit: I realize that my post may come across as arguing over semantics. I really don't care whether they're called exceptions or panics or even if they're mechanically the same thing. What I'm trying to talk about is whether they cause code to become harder to understand because of implicit error cases that are invisible in the source.

2nd edit: I appreciate your several good points in your replies to my posts.