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When an error occurs, it can be detected and handled using the
try
statement as described in The try Statement.
As an example, the following piece of code counts the number of errors
that occurs during a for
loop.
number_of_errors = 0; for n = 1:100 try … catch number_of_errors++; end_try_catch endfor
The above example treats all errors the same. In many situations it
can however be necessary to discriminate between errors, and take
different actions depending on the error. The lasterror
function returns a structure containing information about the last
error that occurred. As an example, the code above could be changed
to count the number of errors related to the ‘*’ operator.
number_of_errors = 0; for n = 1:100 try … catch msg = lasterror.message; if (strfind (msg, "operator *")) number_of_errors++; endif end_try_catch endfor
Alternatively, the output of the lasterror
function can be found
in a variable indicated immediately after the catch
keyword, as
in the example below showing how to redirect an error as a warning:
try … catch err warning(err.identifier, err.message); … end_try_catch
Query or set the last error message structure.
When called without arguments, return a structure containing the last error message and other information related to this error. The elements of the structure are:
message
The text of the last error message
identifier
The message identifier of this error message
stack
A structure containing information on where the message occurred. This may be an empty structure if the information cannot be obtained. The fields of the structure are:
file
The name of the file where the error occurred
name
The name of function in which the error occurred
line
The line number at which the error occurred
column
An optional field with the column number at which the error occurred
The last error structure may be set by passing a scalar structure, err, as input. Any fields of err that match those above are set while any unspecified fields are initialized with default values.
If lasterror
is called with the argument "reset"
, all
fields are set to their default values.
Query or set the last error message.
When called without input arguments, return the last error message and message identifier.
With one argument, set the last error message to msg.
With two arguments, also set the last message identifier.
The next example counts indexing errors. The errors are caught using the
field identifier of the structure returned by the function lasterror
.
number_of_errors = 0; for n = 1:100 try … catch id = lasterror.identifier; if (strcmp (id, "Octave:invalid-indexing")) number_of_errors++; endif end_try_catch endfor
The functions distributed with Octave can issue one of the following errors.
Octave:bad-alloc
Indicates that memory couldn’t be allocated.
Octave:invalid-context
Indicates the error was generated by an operation that cannot be executed in
the scope from which it was called. For example, the function
print_usage ()
when called from the Octave prompt raises this error.
Octave:invalid-fun-call
Indicates that a function was called in an incorrect way, e.g., wrong number of input arguments.
Octave:invalid-indexing
Indicates that a data-type was indexed incorrectly, e.g., real-value index for arrays, nonexistent field of a structure.
Octave:invalid-input-arg
Indicates that a function was called with invalid input arguments.
Octave:undefined-function
Indicates a call to a function that is not defined. The function may exist but Octave is unable to find it in the search path.
When an error has been handled it is possible to raise it again. This
can be useful when an error needs to be detected, but the program should
still abort. This is possible using the rethrow
function. The
previous example can now be changed to count the number of errors
related to the ‘*’ operator, but still abort if another kind of
error occurs.
number_of_errors = 0; for n = 1:100 try … catch msg = lasterror.message; if (strfind (msg, "operator *")) number_of_errors++; else rethrow (lasterror); endif end_try_catch endfor
Reissue a previous error as defined by err.
err is a structure that must contain at least the "message"
and "identifier"
fields. err can also contain a field
"stack"
that gives information on the assumed location of the
error. Typically err is returned from lasterror
.
Query or set the system-dependent variable errno.
When called with no inputs, return the current value of errno.
When called with a numeric input val, set the current value of errno to the specified value. The previous value of errno is returned as err.
When called with a character string name, return the numeric value of errno which corresponds to the specified error code. If name is not a recognized error code then -1 is returned.
See also: errno_list.
Next: Recovering From Errors, Previous: Raising Errors, Up: Handling Errors [Contents][Index]