TCL – Errors and Exceptions
Overview
There are many things that can result in errors in Tcl commands.
Errors can occur because
A command doesn’t exist
It doesn’t receive the right number of arguments
The arguments have the wrong form or
Some other problem occurs in executing the command
If a Tcl error occurs the current command is aborted.
If the command is a part of a larger script then the script is also aborted.
If the error occurs while executing a Tcl procedure, then the procedure is
aborted, and so on until all the active procedures have aborted.
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Example of Error Script
set list {44 16 123 98 57}
set sum 0
foreach el $list {
set sum [expr $sum+$element]
For the above example the Tcl script will be aborted with the following error
message “can’t read "element": no such variable”
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ErrorInfo and errorCode variables
To locate the error, Tcl will create a stack trace and stores the error
information in the global variable called errorInfo.
Tcl provides other piece of information after errors, in the global variable
errorCode.
For the above example the errorInfo will have the following
can’t read "element": no such variable
while executing
"expr $sum+$element"
invoked from within
"set sum [expr $sum+$element]..."
("foreach" body line 2)
invoked from within
"foreach el $list {
set sum [expr $sum+$element]
}"
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Generating Errors in TCL
Error handling in Tcl is provided with the help of error and catch commands.
We can create our own custom error messages.
Syntax
error message? Info? Code?
In the above error command syntax, it has 3 arguments.
message is the error message
info is set in the global variable errorInfo and
code is set in the global variable errorCode
Example :
if {($x < 0} || ($x > 100)} {
error "x is out of range ($x)"
}
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Trapping errors - Catch command
Errors generally cause all active Tcl commands to be aborted.
There may be some situations where we need to continue executing a script
even after an error has occurred.
Catch command is used for this purpose.
Syntax:
catch {script} resultVarName
The catch command has 2 arguments
script is the code to be executed
resultVarName is variable that holds the error or the result
The catch command returns 0 if there is no error and 1 if there is an error.
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Trapping errors - Catch command
Example :
set msg
catch {unset x} msg
msg can’t unset "x": no such variable
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Exceptions
Errors are just one example of a set of events called exceptions.
Apart from errors; break, continue and return commands cause work in
progress to be aborted.
All exceptions cause active scripts to be aborted in the same way, except for two
differences.
First, the errorInfo and errorCode variables are only set during error exceptions.
Second, the exceptions other than errors are almost always caught by an
enclosing command, whereas errors usually unwind all the work in progress.
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Exceptions
All exceptions are accompanied by a string value.
In the case of an error, the string is the error message.
In the case of return, the string is the return value of the procedure or script.
In the case of break and continue the string is always empty.
The catch command actually catches all exceptions, not just errors.
The return value from catch indicates what kind of exception occurred and the
variable specified in catch’s second argument is set to hold the string
associated with the exception.
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Examples
Example :
catch {return "all done"} string
set string
all done
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Tcl Exceptions
Return value from Description
catch
0 Normal return. String gives return value.
1 Error. String gives message describing the problem.
2 The return command was invoked. String gives return
value for procedure or source command.
3 The break command was invoked. String is empty.
4 The continue command was invoked. String is empty.
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Example
proc Div {a b} {
if {$b == 0} {
error "Error generated – denominator value is zero" "Info String for error" 401
} else {
return [expr $a/$b]
if {[catch {puts "Result = [Div 10 0]"} errmsg]} {
puts "ErrorMsg: $errmsg“; puts "ErrorCode: $errorCode“; puts "ErrorInfo:\n$errorInfo\n"
if {[catch {puts "Result = [Div 10 2]"} errmsg]} {
puts "ErrorMsg: $errmsg“; puts "ErrorCode: $errorCode“; puts "ErrorInfo:\n$errorInfo\n"
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12
Example Contd.,
When above code is executed, it produces following result.
ErrorMsg: Error generated – denominator value is zero
ErrorCode: 401
ErrorInfo:
Info String for error
(procedure "Div" line 1)
invoked from within
"Div 10 0“
Result = 5
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Exercise
Set up an associative array that contains a few city names and their
corresponding zip codes. Make at-least 5 elements in the array. Display the
names of the cities and ask the user to enter one. Display the corresponding
zip code if a city entered by the user is in the array. If the city is not in the
array then generate an error message and print the error message.
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Thank You…
