Error handling in C code

cerror handling

What do you consider "best practice" when it comes to error handling errors in a consistent way in a C library.

There are two ways I've been thinking of:

Always return error code. A typical function would look like this:

MYAPI_ERROR getObjectSize(MYAPIHandle h, int* returnedSize);

The always provide an error pointer approach:

int getObjectSize(MYAPIHandle h, MYAPI_ERROR* returnedError);

When using the first approach it's possible to write code like this where the error handling check is directly placed on the function call:

int size;
if(getObjectSize(h, &size) != MYAPI_SUCCESS) {
  // Error handling
}

Which looks better than the error handling code here. 

MYAPIError error;
int size;
size = getObjectSize(h, &error);
if(error != MYAPI_SUCCESS) {
    // Error handling
}

However, I think using the return value for returning data makes the code more readable, It's obvious that something was written to the size variable in the second example.

Do you have any ideas on why I should prefer any of those approaches or perhaps mix them or use something else? I'm not a fan of global error states since it tends to make multi threaded use of the library way more painful.

EDIT:
C++ specific ideas on this would also be interesting to hear about as long as they are not involving exceptions since it's not an option for me at the moment…

Best Answer

I've used both approaches, and they both worked fine for me. Whichever one I use, I always try to apply this principle:

If the only possible errors are programmer errors, don't return an error code, use asserts inside the function.

An assertion that validates the inputs clearly communicates what the function expects, while too much error checking can obscure the program logic. Deciding what to do for all the various error cases can really complicate the design. Why figure out how functionX should handle a null pointer if you can instead insist that the programmer never pass one?

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