Errors

When errors happen, developers should be able to detect the error and abort execution. Thus, KCL introduce the assert syntax.

In the previous topic of schema syntax. Errors can also be raised when a schema is violated.

Syntax

The syntax of the assert statement is the following.

assert_stmt: 'assert' test ['if' test] [',' test]

In the basic form, an assert statement evaluates an expression. If the expression is evaluated to False, the assertion is failed, and an error should be reported.

In the extended form, an error message can be provided. The error message is another expression. It is only evaluated when the expression to be evaluated is evaluated to False. The evaluation result of the error message is printed when reporting the error.

The following is an example:

a = 1
b = 3
condition = False
# a != b evaluates to True, therefore no error should happen.
assert a != b
# a == b is False, in the reported error message, the message "SOS" should be printed.
assert a == b, "SOS"
# if condition is True, then assert `a == b`, if failed, the message "error message" will be printed.
assert a == b if condition, "error message"

The Implementation

When an error happens, no matter it is caused by the assert or the schema syntax, the virtual machine should exit with an exit code greater than 0.

The virtual machine may choose to dump the back trace information, and it is strongly recommended to implement it.

In practice, KCL can dump back trace by default, and an argument can be introduced to disable it.