Error Codes and Exception Handling
Error codes are slowly disappearing from the programmer's environment as modern object-oriented programming languages replace them with exceptions. Exceptions have the advantage of being handled with explicit blocks of code, separate from the rest of the code. While it is considered poor practice in methodologies that use error codes and return codes to indicate failure, programmers often neglect to check return values for error conditions. That negligence can cause undesirable effects, as ignored error conditions often cause more severe problems later in the program. Exceptions are implemented in such a way as to separate the error handling code from the rest of the code. Separating the error handling code from the normal logic makes programs easier to write and understand, since one block of error handling code can service errors from any number of function calls. Exception handling also makes the code more readable than implementations with error codes, since exception handling does not disrupt the flow of the code with frequent checks for error conditions.
Read more about this topic: Error Code
Famous quotes containing the words error, codes, exception and/or handling:
“Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish, and there must certainly be analogies for truth and error in jellyfish life.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“... until both employers and workers groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about ignorant and unfair public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877?)
“There are two great rules in life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less of an exception to the general rule.”
—Samuel Butler (18351902)
“It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.”
—Virginia Woolf (18821941)