Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!grapevine!fiveliter!mhill
From: mhill@fiveliter.EBay.Sun.COM (Maurice Hill)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Functions returning Error codes or actual info
Message-ID: <285@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM>
Date: 11 Sep 90 20:47:48 GMT
References: <772@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu> <1990Sep11.121531.23065@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM
Lines: 16

flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:

>vrm@cathedral.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Vasile R. Montan) writes:
>>   I am making a set of functions which return different types of
>>values: strings, integers, doubles, etc.  For example:
>>          char *get_string();
>>However, I would also like the function to return an error code if the
>>function fails.  I cannot just return a NULL pointer because I want
>>the function to be the same as all of the other get_xxx's.

Perhaps you could implement a different error strategy.  Instead of
returning an error code, set a global such as is done with errno.  

Errno is an index into an array of predefined error messages.  You can
access the list yourself or use the function perror("msg") to print out
your msg plus the error message that corresponds to errno.