Thread: Checking return values versus function handling errors...

I have a bit of a style question. Which is more widely used?

Having the calling function check the return value of a function and handle any errors.. or having the called function handle errors? Whose responsibility should this be? I am partial to having the caller check for errors.

For example:
Caller checks return value of function and handles error:

Code:

if (CheckArgs(argc, 2) == 1){
                fprintf(stderr, "Program only accepts 2 arguments... aborting.");
                return 1;}

I prefer that opposed to having the CheckArgs() function check and handle the error. Is this more standard? It appears standard because nearly every system function uses this kind of error checking.

I would imagine that in most situations, the called function can't handle the error -- usually you want to give the calling program a chance to salvage what it can. And unless you're passing the entire state of your program into this function, the called function can't do that.

An exception would be for something that isn't an error, or at least isn't an unexpected error -- user providing bad data. I would expect a GetFileToOpen function to ask the user again if the first filename given was invalid, and only return an error if the user canceled the process.

Thanks, I have been trying to design better.

For file errors, an error message generating function can check because of the global variable errno (#include <errno.h>). I use something like this:

Code:

void check_cause(void) {
printf("Cause: ");
switch (errno) {
case ENOENT:
	printf("No such file or directory.\n");
	break;
case EACCES:
	printf("Permission denied.\n");
	break;
case EINVAL:
	printf("Invalid argument.\n");
	break;
case EMFILE:
	printf("Too many open files. Now at %d\n", num_distribute);
	break;
default:
	printf("Error Code %d\n", errno);
	break;
	}
}