Re: improving error messages?

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Søren Hauberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> ons, 21 10 2009 kl. 12:38 +0200, skrev Jaroslav Hajek:
>> I ended up with the attached patch. This seems to mostly solve my problems:
>>
>> octave:1> cellslices (1:3, 1, 4)
>> error: cellslices: A(I): Index exceeds matrix dimension.
>> octave:1> any(1, 1.5)
>> error: any: conversion of 1.5 to int value failed
>> error: any: expecting dimension argument to be an integer
>>
>> I know this is no candidate for the best software design award, but it
>> works and is a relatively harmless change...
>>
>> Comments?
>
> Funny! I was thinking about the same problem just a few days ago, and I
> arrived at the same solution. One question, though:
>
> Let's say I'm developing a function 'A' that calls a bunch of other
> functions, i.e.
>
>  function A ()
>    ...
>    B ();
>    ...
>  endfunction
>
> what then happens if 'B' raises an error? Will I then get an error
> message from 'A' instead? This could potentially make it harder to
> develop functions or am I missing something?
>
> Søren
>

No, you'll see a message from the innermost function that raised the
error, be it B or something else. And it only applies to errors
originating from liboctave exceptions (which generally have no way of
knowing who called them) or those generated by the C++ function
error_with_cfn (or error_with_id_cfn). So most user-generated errors
are unaffected.

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz