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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 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…