Identify your Errors better with char[]

Error codes still get used instead of exceptions. Patrick Martin and Dietmar Kühl consider how to use char arrays for better information.

The use of exceptions isn’t a viable error handling approach in all cases and returning codes for error handling is sometimes preferable. However, using integral types for error identification is problematic as there is no good mechanism to guarantee that each value uniquely identifies a specific error. This article proposes the use of char arrays instead as these are unique straight away. In addition char arrays also yield a simple way to get an indication of the cause of an error.

Problem statement

High quality software requires a well defined and straightforward error handling strategy to allow a system to protect or verify its invariants in the face of invalid input or runtime state. There are many positions taken on how to achieve this (see [ Google15 ], [ Bloomberg15 ] [ Mozilla15 ] [ Wikipedia15 ]). It seems clear that there is not yet a consensus on the issue.

Nevertheless, error handing is everyone’s responsibility and particularly so for applications coded in C++ and C. In this article we will make a proposal, which we’ll call error_id , that can be used as an identity concept (concept with a little ‘c’) to ensure when a specific course of action is desired, the error state reported by an API can be unambiguously recognised at arbitrarily remote call sites.

Review of C++ and C approaches

A very common style for reporting from functions in C and C++ is using enum or int values to enumerate all possible reported statuses and returning these values from library calls. An extension of this approach is to encode a value and some additional category info into an integral value, forming a system of return statuses like HRESULT [Wikipedia 2015]. However these different sets of independent enum and int return values cause significant issues from the mapping of these independent sets when interfaces must be composed into new interfaces that themselves must define new return statuses. HRESULT -style status values do not have this issue, but a given system must have all possible error return statuses registered, so that they can be reported and handled consistently. This scales poorly to larger software system. Note that in COM/DCOM HRESULT s can be the outcome of IPC calls, thus extending into other universes of HRESULT values.

It is possible to define even more complex error handling schemes, such as registering callbacks or having an explicit error stack. And finally, global or thread-local system library variables for an errno style approach are of course available, with the usual basket of caveats.

Fundamentally, the problem when library boundaries are crossed is that without access to a shared identity type whose value describes the status the solutions all tends towards the familiar ‘a non zero return indicates an error’, which is sensibly enough indeed the position of many error handling schemes employing return codes exclusively. Schemes have been constructed to allow additional information relevant to that status to be extracted, but composing them can be difficult or verbose.

The concern is that a large amount of code becomes devoted to merely mapping values between the return code sets of various libraries; this has a number of critiques on how this will scale:

claiming to handle the return codes from dependency systems (and transitively via their dependencies) is a forward commitment, which may or may not remain valid over time
the amount of code written / code paths will result in issues
the most prudent approach is to have a consistent ‘non-zero return code indicates an error’ policy, which has the deficiency of requiring all library clients ‘opt into’ the steps required to obtain more information on a failed operation

C++11’s std::error_code

C++11 introduced an interesting approach to deal with errors through the classes std::error_code and std::error_condition : the idea of these classes is that error values are represented as enumerators with the enum type identifying an error category. The difference between std::error_code and std::error_condition is that the former is for implementation specific handling of errors while the latter is portable handing of error messages. Although the two classes are different we only refer to std::error_code below: the same concepts apply to std::error_condition .

Each enum type used with an std::error_code is mapped to a different error category. An error category is a class derived from std::error_category . An std::error_code object holds an enumerator value stored as int and a reference to the corresponding std::error_category . When comparing std::error_code objects both the stored int and the std::error_category can be taken into account, allowing for a mechanism to create unique std::error_code values.

The standard C++ library defines error enums and corresponding std::error_category s defined for typical system domain. Users can create new error enums and corresponding std::error_category s to cover non-standard errors. Unfortunately, creating new error categories is relatively involved: an enum needs to be created and registered as an error enum by specializing std::is_error_code_enum<E> , an error category needs to be created by inheriting from std::error_category and implementing its pure virtual functions, and std::make_error_code() needs to be overloaded for the error enum .

Although std::error_code can address uniqueness of errors propagated in a system, its use is unfortunately fairly complicated. Especially when people are not easily convinced that meaningful errors need to be returned a much simpler approach is needed.

error_id type proposal

The proposed type for error_id is t ypedef char const error_id[] which is the error constant whereas the variable is of course typedef char const* error_value . The idea is that each error_id is made unique by the linker in a process without any need of registration. Note that functions returning an error_id need to be declared to return an error_value because functions can’t return arrays.

We strongly recommend this value should be printable and make sense in the context of inspecting system state from logs, messages, cores etc.

Interestingly, a brief search for prior art in this area reveals no prior proposals, though we’d love to hear of any we have overlooked. An honourable mention should be made of the second example in the rogues’ gallery of exception anti-patterns we present later as that author was part of the way towards our proposal.

As such, we contend that a constant of this type can be used as an identity concept, whose values can be passed through opaquely from any callee to any caller. Caller and callee can be separated by any number of layers of calls and yet the return values can be passed transparently back to a caller without any need of translating error codes, resulting in less effort and less opportunity for inappropriate handling. See Listing 1.

// declaration of an error_id:
extern error_id MY_KNOWN_ERROR;
extern error_value get_an_error();
...
// definition of an error_id:
error_id MY_KNOWN_ERROR = "My Foo Status";
...
// you can't do this (no existential forgery)

error_value ret = get_an_error();
/*
if (ret == "My Foo Status") 
  // does not compile with -Wall -Werror
  // "comparison with string literal results in
  // unspecified behaviour" 
{
    ...
}
*/

if (ret)
{
   if (ret == MY_KNOWN_ERROR)
     // this is how to test
   {
     // for this interesting case, here we might
     // need to do additional work
     // for logging, notification and the like
   }
   mylogger <<  "api_call returned " << ret 
     << "\n";
}
return ret;  // we can always do this with no
             // loss of information

Listing 1

To compare with prior art in this area: note that Ruby’s symbols [ Ruby15 ] and Clojure’s keywords [ Clojure15 ] supply similar concepts supported at the language level.

error_id desirable properties

An error_id has a number of good properties, in addition to being a familiar type to all C and C++ programmers.

it is a built in type in C and C++ – and has the expected semantics: the comparison if (error) will test for presence of an error condition.
default use is efficient
safe for concurrent access
usage is exception free
globally registered, the linker handles it [If patching your binary is your thing, then enjoy, but please beware what implications that process has]
if the content is a printable string constant, (which we strongly recommend) then it inherently supports printing for logging purposes and can be read for debugging. Sadly, printing the ‘missing error_id ’ ( NULL ) results in undefined behaviour for streams and printf , i.e., upon success the ‘error result’ can’t be printed directly.

For the last point it is helpful to use a simply utility function which arranges to turn the result into always printable values:

  error_value error_string(error_value ret) {
    return ret? ret: "<no error>";
  }

error_id usage examples – ‘C style’

As a consequence of these good properties, we can see the following styles are available

Listing 2 – manual error handling (Mozilla style)
Listing 3 – error conditions can be composed dynamically

error_value ret;

ret = in();
if (ret)
    return ret;

ret = a_galaxy();
if (ret)
    return ret;

ret = far_far_away();
if (ret)
    return ret;

ret = awaken_force();

if (ret)
{
  // list known continuable errors here
  if ((ret == e_FORD_BROKEN_ANKLE) ||
      (ret == e_FORD_TRANSPORTATION_INCIDENT) &&
      (Ford::scenes::in_the_can()))
  {
    print_local_failure(ret); // whoops!
  }
  else
  {
    panic(ret); // THIS FUNCTION DOES NOT RETURN
  }
}
order_popcorn();

Listing 2

error_value ret;
for (test_step : test_steps)
{
    ret = test_step(args);
    if (ret)
    {
        log << "raised error [" << ret << "] " 
               "in test step " <<
               test_step << '\n';
        return ret;
    }
    // alternatively we might run all,
    // or more and produce a nicely formatted
    // table for debugging / monitoring
}

Listing 3

Use of error_id with exception based error handling

So far, all the previous code examples would have worked almost as well if error_id were an integral type, however the identity of an error_id is exploitable to provide good answers to a number of the issues that come with using exceptions while retaining the known established good practices and features of exception handling.

Not everyone uses exceptions, and not everyone has used exceptions well; to be fair there has been a history of dubious prior art in this area. All the following are real world examples of code that went to production, or can be found in patent submissions, etc. The names of the guilty parties have been removed while we await the expiry of any relevant statutes.

throw 99
catch (const char * err)
reliance upon catch (...)
reliance upon checking what()
every exception is std::runtime_error

However, making use of error_id while simultaneously inheriting from a standard exception class in the std::exception hierarchy is useful for the same reasons as for using the raw value. As an example: exception class templates specialised on error_id are very apt:

Listing 4 – exception template allowing exceptions with identity
Listing 5 – define and handle exceptions concisely based upon an error_id

// we can define a simple template parameterised
// upon the error_id value
template <error_id errtype>
class typed_error_lite : public std::exception {};

// or we can go a little further and allow for
// some additional information this one has a base
// type and additional info
template <error_id errtype>
class typed_error : public std::runtime_error {
public:
  typed_error(const char* what = errtype): 
              std::runtime_error(what) {}
  const char *type() const { return errtype; }
  operator const char *() { return errtype; }
};

Listing 4

// somewhere
struct FooErrors {
  static constexpr error_id eFOO =
                   "FOOlib: Foo error";
  static           error_id eBAR;
  //...
};
// elsewhere
constexpr error_id FooErrors::eFOO;
          // a definition is still required
error_id FooErrors::eBAR = "FOOlib: Bar error";
...
// we can define new unique exception instances
typedef typed_error<FooErrors::eFOO> foo_err;
typedef typed_error<FooErrors::eBAR> bar_err;
void f() {    
    try
    {
      // something that throws a typed_error
    }
    catch (typed_error<FooErrors::eFOO> const &e)
    {
      // use the template
    }
    /* you can't even write this 
    catch (typed_error<"FOOlib: Foo error"> &e)
    {
      // use the template
    }
    */
    catch (bar_err &e)
    {
      // or a typedef
    }
    catch (...)
    {
      // we don't get here
    }
}

Listing 5

This approach has some rather neat properties: we can avoid ‘false matches’ caused by code handling exception types too greedily. The parameter has to be an error_id , not a string literal.

Having a unified set of identities allows callees to throw an exception, relying upon callers higher in the stack to make the decision on how to handle that status, and avoiding the need to re-throw the exception. Even if re-thrown – if the same error_id is used, the identity is of course preserved even if the stack at the point of re-throw is different from the originating thrower. Listing 6 shows exception handling with fall-through.

try
{
  // something that throws a 
  // typed_error<LibA::ePOR>
  // if LibA::ePOR is not a publicly visible
  // value, it is not possible to write a handler
  // for that specific case nor throw one, except
  // for the code owning that identity
}
catch (typed_error<LibA::eBAR> &e)
{
  // not caught
}
catch (std::runtime_error &e)
{
  // typed_error<LibA::ePOR> is caught here,
  // conveniently
}

Listing 6

There is one responsibility that is granted along with the benefit of universality: since everyone could receive an error code, there is a need to approach declaring error_id instances to some standard of consistency. This may well require defining a scheme to generate standard formats and help ensure unique values, perhaps based upon library, component, etc. – see Listing 7, which is a simple example for generating a ‘standard’ error_id value.

#define SCOPE_ERROR(grp, pkg, error_str)      \
                    grp "-" pkg ": " error_str
// this can be used thus
const char LibA::ePOR[] =
  SCOPE_ERROR("GRP", "FOO", "Foo not reparable");
// which give us the string:
// "GRP-FOO: Foo not reparable"

// Organisations can exploit other preprocessor
// features to ensure uniqueness of output
#define TOSTRING(x) #x

#define SCOPE_ERROR_LOCATION(grp, pkg,        \
                            error_str)        \
  __FILE__ ":" TOSTRING(__LINE__) " " grp "-" \
  pkg ": " error_str " "
// which give us a string like 
// ../test_error_id.cpp:39 GRP-FOO: Foo not Bar

Listing 7

In summary, the primary risk from identical strings in two logically distinct error_id declarations is when these error_id symbols need to be distinguishable by some calling code when an error_value may receive a value of either identity. error_id does not have an issue and ‘does the right thing’ from the viewpoint of reading the code. However it should be remembered the identity of an error_id is intended to derive entirely from its content, and in the prior case, the printed values will be the same, further reinforcing the utility of a rule requiring error_id content which is printable and distinct for each unique identity.

No existential forgery of error_id

So, what is meant by ‘existential forgery’? There are two types:

the first is caused innocently enough by interfacing C++ client code with a C style API which define an enum for the return status type from an interface. This forces us to make a mapping some status to another – clearly this is a good place for incorrect logic to creep in, on the basis on the nature of the code.
the second is caused by the problems caused by a policy of not documenting return values; integral values cannot be made an implementation detail and in large systems it is all too common for code to handle the return -99 to appear when clients perceive a need to perform handling for that situation.

This problem is addressed by error_id in multiple ways:

possibly most valuably, we can break out of the cycle because the moderate level of self-description in the string of the raw value should facilitate implementing a better approach as trivially the component, file and issue can be delivered
additionally, error_id values can be made internal or for public consumption, enforcing a consistent discipline using the language, again the string contents can back this up, but the clear contract supplied by the library can be ‘please feel free to interpret these error states, but any others must be handled using the “Internal Error” strategy’
note also that exposing an error_id is no longer a forward commitment to support that value for all future time, in contrast to integral value return codes, as prior values can be removed in new revisions of the interface, in addition to new ones being introduced and clients addressing removed values will simply fail to compile.

Listing 8 shows the generation of identities and unique identities.

const char N::new_bar[] =
    SCOPE_ERROR("GRP", "FOO", "Foo not Bar");
assert(strcmp(N::new_bar, FooErrors::eBAR) == 0);
assert((N::new_bar != FooErrors::eBAR));
try
{
  throw typed_error<N::new_bar>
    ("bazong not convertible to bar");
}
catch (typed_error<FooErrors::eBAR> &e)
{
  assert(0 == "in typed_error<FooErrors::eBAR> 
    handler");
}
catch (typed_error<N::new_bar> &e)
{
  // ok!
}
catch (...)
{
  assert(0 == "Fell through to catch all
    handler");
}

Listing 8

What error_id cannot do

No solution is perfect, and this approach is no exception. In the spirit of allowing people to choose for themselves, let us attempt to list some of the common concerns one would come up with and address them:

error_id s cannot be cases in switch statements
we do not see this as much of an issue as this restriction only applies to code using raw error_id , and not exceptions and there are two main use cases:
- hand crafting the mapping between incompatible return statuses. This use should not be necessary as error_id values would ideally only need to be thrown/returned and consumed
- finally reaching code responsible for handling a set of specific codes differently. In this case, chained if / else if blocks for integral types should suffice.
return additional info
- this restriction is of course a natural consequence of using a pure error_id as an identity
- exception classes similar to typed_error of course allow as much context as one is prepared to pay for in each object instance
- if status need more context – conditions like ‘[file|table|foo] not found’ being the most infuriating – then we have to leave it to the user to code up a solution to pass back more context. The same restriction applies when using integral results.
defend against abuse
in a C / C++ application, there is no way to completely prevent abuse such as error_id values being appropriated and used inappropriately; the intent of the proposal is to illustrate the benefits arising from the simplicity and effectiveness of using error_id . We hope that the solution would be adopted widely upon its own merits.
yield stable values between processes / builds
- firstly, it should be remembered the value is not be inspected – only what it points to
- secondly, this is unavoidable and the solution of course stops working at the boundary of the process – marshalling status codes between different processes, binaries and even different aged builds of the same code cannot rely upon the address. This is a job for some marshalling scheme layered on top of an existing status code system.
be used as translatable strings
- the most important point to make here is that these strings should never be treated as trusted output safe to be displayed to system end users. An error_id can travel as an opaque value, and hence there is no rigorous mechanism that could prevent information leakage
- finally error_id is a pointer to a const array of char: dynamic translation into user readable strings can only be done by mapping values to known translations. For even a modest size system it becomes more effective to have a facility for text translation which would offer more features relevant to that task than just an error_id .

Comparison of error_id and std::error_code

The proposed error_id and std::error_code have some common features. In particular, both address error propagation with and without exceptions, both provide uniquely identified errors, and both can be globally consumed without requiring declarations of all errors.

There are also important differences. For std::error_code the category yields one level or hierarchical grouping while there is no grouping of error_id s at all. On the other hand, creating new errors with std::error_code s requires definition of multiple entities while creating an error_id is just one definition. If the respective specific error should be detectable by users suitable declarations in headers are needed in both cases.

A major difference is that error_id can be used both with C and C++ code while std::error_code only works with C++ code. In code bases where different languages are used in the same executable it is helpful to use an error reporting scheme available to all of these languages.

Wrap up

In summary, once the perhaps slightly odd feeling of using error_id fades, we hope it is a technique that people will adopt in composing larger systems when the error handling strategy is being designed. The process wide identity concept allows for composition of large-scale applications comprising many components, while affording the opportunity of an exception-like error handling with or without employing actual exceptions, and maintaining a high level of usability for debugging. This approach will allow both C and C++ libraries to become first class citizens in a design where error handling need never be left to chance or assumption.

Please note that it is implementation defined whether identical string literals use identical or different addresses [c++ std lex.string para 13]. In fact, constant folding where one string literal becomes the data for many identical declarations of string literals in code occurs in many current compilers. Hence it is key to use char arrays where this does not happen.

Recommendations

Define your identities for system states
Define how you wish to expose these identities and distribute them. For example, component level, subsystem level, application wide?
Use them rigorously!

Curate’s eggs

There are yet some potentially interesting ramifications that fall out from error_id that have not been demonstrated in the interest of brevity, but which we’ll touch upon here to pique your interest.

missing switch : it is possible to write template metaprograms that will
- allow statically typed handlers to be registered for a switch statement to ensure values are always handled, with various outcomes for a fall-through, (Fail, Pass, etc.)
- even prevent compilation if handlers are not located for specific error_id instances
private values : it is possible to define an error_id with an value not visible to clients
- for typed error this would allows a standard ‘abort via exception’ for reporting those error conditions not understood explicitly by callers
- for raw error id this can allow a crude hierarchy of error conditions to be defined.

Footnote

Michael Maguire discovered that due to an apparent compiler bug in IBM's xlC V11.1 the arrays of unspecified size char[] need to be explicitly decayed. The fix is to use +eFOO instead of eFOO when eFOO is to be passed to a function template.