Scribd
Upload
8 views

C - Error Handling

Uploaded by

michal hana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
8 views

C - Error Handling

Uploaded by

michal hana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

6/17/24, 12:19 AM C - Error Handling

C - Error Handling
As such, C programming does not provide direct support for error handling but being
a system programming language, it provides you access at lower level in the form of
return values. Most of the C or even Unix function calls return -1 or NULL in case of
any error and set an error code errno. It is set as a global variable and indicates an
error occurred during any function call. You can find various error codes defined in
<error.h> header file.

So a C programmer can check the returned values and can take appropriate action
depending on the return value. It is a good practice, to set errno to 0 at the time of
initializing a program. A value of 0 indicates that there is no error in the program.

errno, perror(). and strerror()


The C programming language provides perror() and strerror() functions which can
be used to display the text message associated with errno.

The perror() function displays the string you pass to it, followed by a colon,
a space, and then the textual representation of the current errno value.
The strerror() function, which returns a pointer to the textual representation
of the current errno value.

Let's try to simulate an error condition and try to open a file which does not exist.
Here I'm using both the functions to show the usage, but you can use one or more
ways of printing your errors. Second important point to note is that you should use
stderr file stream to output all the errors.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>

extern int errno ;

int main () {

FILE * pf;
int errnum;

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/c_error_handling.htm 1/4
6/17/24, 12:19 AM C - Error Handling

pf = fopen ("unexist.txt", "rb");

if (pf == NULL) {

errnum = errno;
fprintf(stderr, "Value of errno: %d\n", errno);
perror("Error printed by perror");
fprintf(stderr, "Error opening file: %s\n", strerror( errnum ));
} else {

fclose (pf);
}

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Value of errno: 2
Error printed by perror: No such file or directory
Error opening file: No such file or directory

Divide by Zero Errors


It is a common problem that at the time of dividing any number, programmers do
not check if a divisor is zero and finally it creates a runtime error.

The code below fixes this by checking if the divisor is zero before dividing −

#include <stdio.h> Live Demo


#include <stdlib.h>

main() {

int dividend = 20;


int divisor = 0;
int quotient;

if( divisor == 0){


fprintf(stderr, "Division by zero! Exiting...\n");

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/c_error_handling.htm 2/4
6/17/24, 12:19 AM C - Error Handling

exit(-1);
}

quotient = dividend / divisor;


fprintf(stderr, "Value of quotient : %d\n", quotient );

exit(0);
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Division by zero! Exiting...

Program Exit Status


It is a common practice to exit with a value of EXIT_SUCCESS in case of program
coming out after a successful operation. Here, EXIT_SUCCESS is a macro and it is
defined as 0.

If you have an error condition in your program and you are coming out then you
should exit with a status EXIT_FAILURE which is defined as -1. So let's write above
program as follows −

#include <stdio.h> Live Demo


#include <stdlib.h>

main() {

int dividend = 20;


int divisor = 5;
int quotient;

if( divisor == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Division by zero! Exiting...\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}

quotient = dividend / divisor;


fprintf(stderr, "Value of quotient : %d\n", quotient );

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/c_error_handling.htm 3/4
6/17/24, 12:19 AM C - Error Handling

exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Value of quotient : 4

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/c_error_handling.htm 4/4

You might also like