19 Sep
2017
19 Sep
'17
6:52 a.m.
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017, at 15:37, Steve Johnson wrote:
I wrote a paper on error messages at one point. I had
examples from
bad to best. In a nutshell (worst to best):
* <program aborts, leaving the world in an unknown state>
* "internal error", "beta table overflow", "operation
failed"
* "Writing the output file failed"
* "File xxx could not be opened for writing."
* "File xxx could not be opened for writing: check the file location
and permissions"
* "Writing the output file xxx caused an error. See <link> for
possible reasons and corrections"
Most git messages fall between 2 and 3. But there are occasional 4's
and 5's.
Just out of curiosity, where does perror(filename), quite possibly the
*most* common error message on Unix as a whole, fall on your scale? It
says which of the file location or permissions (or whatever else) it is,
but not whether it was attempting to open it for reading or writing.
(Of course, git sometimes has the problem that other cases of a 4 or 5
don't: needing to understand its internal structure to know why it wants
that file and how to fix it.)