Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!daveh
From: daveh@marob.MASA.COM (Dave Hammond)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: friendly messages
Message-ID: <604@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 30 Mar 89 22:54:36 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond)
Organization: ESCC  New York City
Lines: 20

In article <1411@moscom.UUCP> jgp@moscom.UUCP posts his favorite error
message printer.

I note that for a return value it provides the return from vsprintf.
Since error message printers are typically invoked prior to a return,
or exit, I opt to have my favorite error printer return -1.

While this, perhaps, bastardizes the significance of the function's return
value, it (more often than not) makes for convenient error handling:

	...
	if (an_error_occurred)
		return(errmsg(errcode, "Can't open file %s.", fname));

Obviously this presumes that the calling function normally returns -1 as
an its error condition value.  Functions which don't employ a -1 error
return just void the return from the error printer.
--
Dave Hammond
daveh@marob.masa.com