On Tuesday, 7 January 2020 07:47:28 UTC, Axel Wagner wrote: > > Personally, I consider panics "run-time type-errors". That is, they > indicate a bug that couldn't be caught statically by the type-system - so > the program shouldn't have compiled in the first place and crashing it is > the right choice. Dereferencing a nil-pointer or indexing out-of-bounds > fall into that category. So does using reflect to do otherwise invalid > operations (which is why reflect panics). IMO, a straight-out rejection of > panics doesn't make sense, unless you assume your type-system is perfect > and so there are no bug-free programs. > > Another way to look at it, is that a panic in general dumps a stack-trace, > while an error is being presented to the human using the resulting > software. And that stack-traces in general are not actionable to the user > of a software, but only its developer - while error message don't contain > the necessary details to debug a program, but can (should!) provide > actionable advise to its user. Thus, panics are the right tool to use when > reporting an issue that requires programmer attention and errors are the > right tool when reporting an issue that requires user-attention (or, of > course, can be handled programmatically).¹ >
Or to put it another way: if the caller of your function violates your *API contract* then panic. The bug is with the caller for not invoking your function properly, and therefore the calling code needs to be fixed. By that definition: if the API contract says "you must pass in a valid SQL statement", and you can say with 100% certainty that the SQL they passed in is invalid, then by all means panic. But if you can't be sure of that - e.g. the problem could be a failure to connect to the database - then return an error. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/693c9e10-06f2-49b3-a9cc-2b9025b88041%40googlegroups.com.
