Questions related to handling errors and exceptions. According to Wikipedia, Exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence, during computation, of exceptions – anomalous or exceptional events requiring special processing – often changing the normal flow of program execution. It ...
3
votes
1answer
98 views
Should I always return an error code from C functions?
I have the following code in many places in a large application:
if (datastruct.data_ok &&
cur_time > datastruct.start_time && cur_time < datastruct.end_time)
{
...
69
votes
15answers
12k views
Should one check for null if he does not expect null?
Last week, we had a heated argument about handling nulls in our application's service layer. The question is in the .NET context, but it will be the same in Java and many other technologies.
The ...
0
votes
2answers
41 views
Catch unusual exceptions on production code for web apps
Lets say I have a web app, and despite my best testing efforts, several of the many thousands of people who uses it will find some way to generate an exception. Sure, I have error handling code for my ...
7
votes
2answers
596 views
How should I handle logger failures?
In several of our company's applications, we use a custom logger. It's fairly robust, though we may replace it with something like NLog in the future. One of the logger's tasks is to log any ...
0
votes
4answers
52 views
Testing generic errors
I've got a program that validates it's input, and then errors.
So far for each kind of error I created a new derived class. But this was getting pretty unwieldy (the input is complex so there are ...
3
votes
0answers
97 views
What's the best way to handle Windows API errors in response to system messages or when I have nowhere to return them to?
This is going to be a really stupid question and I hope it's fine for Stack Exchange at all, let alone just this part of it...
Right now, my custom Table control uses panic() functions that print an ...
1
vote
3answers
106 views
Protect memory from a potentially seg faulting function call
How can one safely call a function that might segfault without corrupting the stack or the heap?
These SO questions cover using signal handlers and setjmp.h to regain control.
Coming back to life ...
2
votes
4answers
84 views
What an application should do when there is an error notifying the user of an error?
Say I have an application, and it writes (among other things) errors to a log file. It's the first place the user would be asked to go and look if there was a problem. Let's also assume that this is a ...
1
vote
2answers
96 views
Why is there “Unknown error” in real life? [duplicate]
As a programmer, I always try my best to explain what happened in the code when I have to show an error message, for example:
try {
int a = b / 0;
} catch (NumberFormatException ex) {
...
1
vote
2answers
97 views
How should I provide detailed information about an error, if not through HTTP status codes?
This question comes from here. I believe it deserves to be on its own instead of being lost in a long question with multiple points.
I'm building an API and find myself limited by HTTP error ...
0
votes
1answer
59 views
How to handle coding errors in my PHP AJAX code?
How do I handle coding errors in my PHP which has no GUI, only an API? I am concerned that I might never know that there are any. Note that only I will develop the client side. This is not a public ...
0
votes
1answer
49 views
Dealing with error in data - Idempotent approach
A prior question had an answer that interested me from a design perspective. I work in geospatial data and occasionally have to deal with voids when I read these binary files into my product. What is ...
32
votes
3answers
5k views
Is address 0000000C a special address?
When programming sometimes things break. You made a mistake and your program tries to read from a wrong address.
One thing that stands out to me that often those exceptions are like :
Access ...
2
votes
2answers
66 views
How to implement error handling/returning while streaming a message
Say someone calls a web service on a server, the relevant data is being retrieved in batches and the message is being streamed to the client. In the middle of the message some kind of exception is ...
-2
votes
3answers
150 views
Could programming ever have existed without error checking? [closed]
I think that in programming error checking is extremely important, not a secondary topic, what if your programme crashes without an error, just silently aborting? What if you must discover a ...
1
vote
2answers
91 views
Recovering a process after illegal instruction exception
Is it possible in theory to recover after a process is mistakenly pointed-out to read from a wrong memory address, rather than terminating it?
Let say an error while working with registers lead the ...
89
votes
11answers
12k views
The modern way to perform error handling…
I've been pondering this problem for a while now and find myself continually finding caveats and contradictions, so I'm hoping someone can produce a conclusion to the following:
Favour exceptions ...
0
votes
3answers
102 views
Coerce bad input or always crash early
The general consensus seems to favor the Crash Early approach, the most reputable source being the acclaimed Pragmatic Programmer book.
And while I understand and agree with the advice in many ...
30
votes
20answers
2k views
How do you tackle really bizarre errors that keep you puzzled for more than 10 hours? [closed]
You know them, those errors that make NO sense. Where it seems like a gremlin just jumped deep inside your chips and messed up something. Do you take a walk, write stuff, call an uncle?
2
votes
2answers
104 views
Preferred way of handling errors when loading an object from a file
If I want to load an object from a file, there are a number of things that can go wrong. Thus, one needs a way of handling errors when doing so. In some languages, like haskell, one can return a Maybe ...
0
votes
0answers
42 views
When calculating cyclomatic complexity, should Exception Handling considered? [duplicate]
When calculating the cyclomatic complexity of a piece of code (/method/program), should any Exception Handling be taken into account?
For example, if you include a try-catch block in your ...
7
votes
2answers
721 views
What's the difference between robustness and fault-tolerance?
Systems / programs / distributed algorithms / ... are often described with the predicate robust or fault-tolerant.
What is the difference?
Details:
When I google for +robust +"fault-tolerant", I ...
3
votes
1answer
455 views
MVC: Where is the right place to set error messages?
I have a ASP.NET MVC application where in all my Models have an Errors Property used to store non-validation errors which I than display in my Views. Where is the right place to populate the error ...
28
votes
8answers
1k views
Is it okay to use exceptions as tools to “catch” errors early?
I use exceptions to catch problems early. For example:
public int getAverageAge(Person p1, Person p2){
if(p1 == null || p2 == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("One or more of ...
4
votes
2answers
111 views
Defining error codes
We are designing an error-handling framework for a cryptographic library written in C.
The approach we are taking is that relatively few errors are propagated back to the user since on most occasions ...
1
vote
0answers
107 views
Handling and managing error codes
I'm looking for examples of creating, handling and managing error numbers/codes.
To understand what I'm takling about, let's take example scenario:
(EU - end user, IT - it helpdesk)
EU: - (calls IT) ...
7
votes
2answers
864 views
How to Implement Error Handling [closed]
Even though I've programmed on a professional level for some years I still do not fully understand error handling. Although my applications work fine, the error handling isn't implemented at a ...
4
votes
1answer
196 views
Error Handling Strategies in Multithreaded Environments
TL;DR What error generating and handling strategies do you use in Multithreaded code intended for use by others and why do you use them? If applicable, state what programming paradigm it's useful for. ...
-4
votes
1answer
115 views
Try and catch error trapping, why is it so significant? [duplicate]
I try to understand why should I "try" a method to catch errors.
It looks to me like the concept is: "letting a process run assuming its not properly
developed".
Should I always assume that a ...
1
vote
2answers
210 views
Is goto to improve DRY-ness OK?
My code has many checks to detect errors in various cases (many conditions would result in the same error), inside a function returning an error struct. Instead of looking like this:
err_struct ...
10
votes
2answers
231 views
Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell
I'm working on learning Haskell, and I've come across three different ways of dealing with errors in functions I write:
I can simply write error "Some error message.", which throws an exception.
I ...
10
votes
6answers
1k views
Designing database related methods, which is better to return: true/false or row affected?
I have some methods that perform some data changing in a database (insert, update, and delete). The ORM I'm using return row-affected int values for those type of method. What should I return for "my ...
21
votes
15answers
9k views
Arguments for or against using Try/Catch as logical operators [closed]
I just discovered some lovely code in our companies app that uses Try-Catch blocks as logical operators.
Meaning, "do some code, if that throws this error, do this code, but if that throws this error ...
66
votes
14answers
16k views
Why is 0 false?
This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages?
String comparison
Since the question seems a little bit too ...
10
votes
4answers
3k views
`trigger_error` vs `throw Exception` in the context of PHP's magic methods
I'm having a debate with a colleague over the correct usage (if any) of trigger_error in the context of magic methods. Firstly, I think that trigger_error should be avoided except for this one case.
...
29
votes
4answers
2k views
How much information about an error should be shown to the user?
Applications can always throw errors. If such an error occurs, the user should be notified, because what he asked the application to do has not succeeded.
However, how much information should the ...
57
votes
16answers
21k views
How to handle divide by zero in a language that doesn't support exceptions?
I'm in the middle of developing a new programming language to solve some business requirements, and this language is targeted at novice users. So there is no support for exception handling in the ...
4
votes
4answers
2k views
Exceptions vs ErrorCodes when working with devices
Out team is at the cusp of a new project.
One of the components at the boundary of the system is the component which interacts with a printer through an external COM component (referenced as a usual ...
6
votes
5answers
715 views
Checked vs Unchecked vs No Exception… A best practice of contrary beliefs
There are many requirements needed for a system to properly convey and handle exceptions. There are also many options for a language to choose from to implement the concept.
Requirements for ...
1
vote
2answers
535 views
IllegalStateException vs. IllegalArgumentException
In have written a function which expects the caller to pass in a configuration file like XML. Then I parse this given file and extract something which i then return.
In this function (at least) two ...
2
votes
0answers
112 views
Is there a theory for “transactional” sequences of failing and no-fail actions?
My question is about writing transaction-like functions that execute sequences of actions, some of which may fail. It is related to the general C++ principle "destructors can't throw," no-fail ...
16
votes
5answers
19k views
try-catch in javascript… isn't it a good practice?
There is a provision for try-catch block in javascript. While in java or any other language it is mandatory to have error handling, I don't see anybody using them in javascript for greater extent. ...
1
vote
2answers
306 views
global try-catch in presentation layer
I have a 3-layered app structured as follows.
Presentation Layer (ASP.NET MVC project)
Business Logic Layer (Services for controllers in PL)
Data Access Layer (Repositories)
Each Controller in PL ...
3
votes
2answers
169 views
What is better to return from the DataService: Status or Exceptions?
I have a MVVM app with DataServices (using mvvmlight).
Right now, i'm using it like
var answer = await myDataService.PullList(categoryId);
if (answer.Status == Ok)
...
2
votes
1answer
84 views
How to handle errors best addressed in a higher abstraction layer and dependent on state inferred in current layer?
I have a use-case that can be repaired, but the logic for repairing it is best done in a higher level of abstraction. Just throwing exception/failure is ugly because it's hard to pass back up through ...
2
votes
1answer
437 views
Passing multiple errors back from service layer
I am using Spring for a web application. To validate a user's input in a form such as for creating a Person entity I user JSR 303 validation to check for not null/empty or valid patterns etc.. Some ...
3
votes
6answers
1k views
Whats the best way to handle errors in code?
So I'm a little concerned about my error handling... Currently my execution path looks something like this:
Users.aspx -> App_Code/User.cs -> Data Layer/User.cs
So now when I try to update a ...
0
votes
2answers
55 views
Handling ignorable failure conditions in a method
I'm working on a coarse API for performing higher level business functions. Under many conditions these functions may fail in a way that is expected (not exceptional), ie. the function may not be ...
14
votes
5answers
5k views
null pointers vs. Null Object Pattern
Attribution: This grew out of a related P.SE question
My background is in C / C++, but I have worked a fair amount in Java and am currently coding C#. Because of my C background, checking passed and ...
5
votes
5answers
1k views
How should I handle exception that *should* never be thrown? [duplicate]
What is the best way to handle errors that shouldn't ever happen?
My current way to do this is to throw an exception if the 'thing that shouldn't happen' does happen, like so:
/*
* Restoring from a ...
