1. A method for handling faults encountered while executing a vector instruction in a processor, comprising: receiving the vector instruction, wherein the vector instruction uses at least one vector of values that includes N elements as an input; optionally receiving a predicate vector that includes N elements; and executing the vector instruction, wherein executing the vector instruction involves: if the predicate vector is received, for each element in the vector of values for which a corresponding element in the predicate vector is active, otherwise, for each element in the vector of values, performing an operation for the vector instruction for the element in the vector of values, wherein performing the operation involves: generating a fault if the operation performed for a leftmost element in the vector of values for which an operation is performed is determined to be an illegal operation; and masking any faults for illegal operations performed for any elements to the right of the leftmost element in the vector of values.