nuance? yes, there's nuance to this.

for a long while i wasn't sure how to think about errors and always wondered what's the best way to go about them. after a good dose of stockholm syndrome i now love go's approach the best. there are a few concepts i had to understand before the big picture "clicked" for me.

# exceptions

go's errors are just ordinary return values. such system is often compared to exceptions. let's compare it to java. java has 2 types of exceptions:

• checked exceptions: exception objects inheriting from the Exception base class. a function must pre-declare all possible checked exceptions it can throw and the compiler verifies this. these are part of the function's contract.
• unchecked exceptions: exception objects inheriting from the RuntimeException base class. the function doesn't have to predeclare these, a function can throw these anytime.

which one to use? from https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/runtime.html:

If a client can reasonably be expected to recover from an exception, make it a checked exception. If a client cannot do anything to recover from the exception, make it an unchecked exception.

example for an unchecked exception: the code passes a null pointer to a function that accepts only non-null pointers. there's nothing the caller can do about this other than not calling it in the first place. so the fix here is a code change, not something that can be pre-coded.

another way to think about this: checked exceptions can be used for control flow. unchecked exceptions on the other hand can only be propagated up. they then end up in logs or presented to humans who can then do something about them.

# error domains

error values have similar 2 types (terminology from https://matttproud.com/blog/posts/go-errors-and-api-contracts.html):

• domain errors: errors with a known type that the callers can use for flow control.
• opaque errors: errors with an undocumented type such as the one returned by errors.New or fmt.Errorf. these should not be used for flow control other than logging them or presenting them to humans.

this was a key realization for me that escaped me for years of programming.

if a function can return a domain error, it should be clearly indicated in its documentation. example "go doc os.Open":

Open opens the named file for reading. If successful, methods on the returned file can be used for reading; the associated file descriptor has mode O_RDONLY. If there is an error, it will be of type *PathError.

anything else should be treated as an "opaque error". such errors should be propagated up or logged/presented when it can no longer be passed upwards. they should be never used for making control-flow decisions.

in general return opaque errors unless returning a domain error is explicitly needed. fmt.Errorf allows wrapping errors with both %v and %w: https://go.dev/blog/go1.13-errors#wrapping-errors-with-w. wrapping with %w keeps the error a domain error. therefore in most cases use only %v to ensure the returned error is opaque.

# annotating errors

the main difference of error values to exceptions is that such propagation has to be done manually after each function call that can return an error. but this becomes super handy! let's take this example:

  package userpkg
  ...

  func VerifyPassword(request *http.Request) error {
    ...
    hash, err := sqlpkg.LookupUserColumn(request.FormValue("username"), "hash")
    if err != nil {
      return fmt.Errorf("userpkg.LookupHash username=%q: %v", request.FormValue("username"), err)
    }
    ...
  }

with "return nil" type of error handling you might get this log entry:

  /login failed: not found.

what was not found? with java-like exception handling you would get stacktraces too:

  /login failed: NotFoundException
    sqlpkg.LookupUserColumn
    userpkg.VerifyPassword
    handlerspkg.RequestHandler

still unclear what was not found. but maybe this time one could make reasonable guesses what the problem might be after few hours of code reading. with the practice of adding handcrafted context at each level the log message could be this:

  /login failed: handlerspkg.VerifyPassword request-id=12345: userpkg.LookupHash username="": userdb.NotFound

from this error message the error is immediately apparent: the request's form params don't contain a valid username. probably a form validation missed this before.

note that the stacktrace is not needed at all. while the stacktrace helps to locate where the error happened but it doesn't tell us what exactly the error was. it doesn't tell the "story" how the code led to the error.

the stacktrace is also very verbose and visually jarring. the above is simple but in reality the callchain is dozens of lines and contains lot of useless fluff. each log entry is very long and makes scanning the logs hard. the handcrafted message is quite to the point. not only tells where the error is but it also tells how the code ended up being in that state. it takes out a lot of mystery detective work from the debugging sessions.

in the above case each error message fragment has a unique prefix string. the uniqueness is ensured by the pkgname/ prefix, more on this later. the callchain can be easily reconstructed from this in the very rare cases when needed via simple grepping. and the callchain can be reconstructed even if there were some refactorings in the meantime. in the stacktrace case a refactoring would change line numbers and then it would be very tricky to follow the code exactly.

there are bunch of proposals and libraries for stacktraces, see https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2023-11-10-stack-traces-in-go/. don't use them. if you do annotations well then you won't need them and debugging errors will be a breeze. stacktraces might allow you to get lazy with the annotations and you might end up having harder time debugging.

# unique error message fragments

it's super handy when you have an error message and from it you can jump straight to code.

one way to achieve this is using source code locations in the error messages. this is what happens when the error includes stacktraces. as explained before this is quite verbose and spammy. furthermore the message on its own contains very little information without the source code.

another approach: make the error messages unique. this contains more useful information to a human reading it than a source code location. but it also allows jumping to the source code location directly with a grep-like tool. and the jump works even if the code was slightly refactored in the meantime.

there are proposals to add source code location tracing to fmt.Errorf or a similar function: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/60873. this should not needed if you can keep the error message unique.

how do you keep the message unique?

the established pattern fmt.Errorf() adds a message, then a colon follows, then the wrapped error. to ensure it's easy to find where a error message fragment begins and ends make sure the fragment doesn't contain a colon.

don't do this:

  fmt.Errorf("verify password for request-id:%d: %v", id, err)

but do this instead:

  fmt.Errorf("verify password for request-id=%d: %v", id, err)

this will make scanning the errors for the fragments much easier.

but "verify password" might not be unique on its own. read on.

# error message wording

how to phrase the error annotation? keep it short. avoid stop words such as failed, error, couldn't, etc. this is painful to read:

  /login failed: failed verifying password for request-id 12345: failed looking looking up hash for "": not found

when wrapping errors then make the message an imperative mood of what the function tried to do just because the imperative mood is short. always start it with a verb. this style is similar to function names. they also start with verb and use imperative mood. but don't include the function name in the message, focus on the action the function was doing when the error encountered. the function name often doesn't matter and would be just visual noise (especially if the function is just a helper). the caller can often provide more accurate context (sometimes it's the function name, sometimes is something better).

leaf level errors usually describe a bad state. it's ok to use passive stance for those (i.e. when not wrapping). example: "not found" in the above snippet.

some people advise this:

  func RequestHandler(request *http.Request) (err error)
    defer func() {
      if err != nil {
        err = fmt.Errorf("RequestHandler: %w", err)
      }
    }
    ...
  }

no, don't do it. it will make the errors harder to use. first, it might lead to avoiding describing the exact actions the function was doing and adding the necessary details. second, it breaks the unique string benefits: a simple grep to find code for an error will no longer work.

so don't name it based on the current function, name the error after what the current function was doing when the error occurred. now concatenate the words, CamelCase them, prefix them with the package name and the result is a near unique string. instead of

  /login failed: failed verifying password for request-id 12345: failed looking looking up hash for "": not found

the error is this:

  /login failed: handlerspkg.VerifyPassword request-id=12345: userpkg.LookupUserHash user="": userdb.NotFound

more about this at @/errmsg.

# avoid redundancy in annotations

if you squint enough then all this annotation work is actually writing a story. each layer or function has a piece of the full story and they have to include that fragment in the story. but the story gets boring and hard to read if it contains redundant information. take this example:

  func readfile(filename string) (string, error) {
    buf, err := os.ReadFile(filename)
    if err != nil {
      return "", fmt.Errorf("read file %q: %v", filename, err)
    }
    return string(buf), nil
  }

  func f() {
    fmt.Println(readfile("foo.txt"))
  }

the error message from this would say this:

  read file "foo.txt": open foo.txt: no such file or directory

this is redundant. in this particular case it is fine to simply "return err". don't take the "always annotate" rule too much to the heart. annotation is often not needed when propagating errors from helper functions, small wrappers of other functions from the same package. this is how go errors can avoid the java-like verbosity where each helper function is also included in the final stacktrace. if you do this then add a comment to be clear about this:

  buf, err := os.ReadFile(filename)
  if err != nil {
    // no error wrapping: os errors already contain the filename.
    return "", err
  }

unfortunately you might not know beforehand that io errors all contain the filename. so in that case it's fine to err on the side of redundancy. simply remove the redundancy once you see that some errors are hard to read due to this.

writing a good story needs good artistic skills. those skills come with experience. don't worry too much about it. just make sure the errors contain all the important bits, even if duplicated.

# control flow

there's one big problem with all this manual error annotation: it's super slow. the good news is that it only happens on the error path which should be the rarer codepath. that assumes that you don't use errors for ordinary code logic.

this example from above is actually bad:

  package sqlpkg
  ...
  func LookupUserColumn(username, column string) (string, error)

compare it to this:

  package sqlpkg
  ...
  func LookupUserColumn(username, column string) (value string, found bool, err error)

this latter form distinguishes found/not-found from a sql database error such as bad sql query or connection error or database corruption. the not-found condition could be very frequent. and as such it would be frequently used to make code flow decisions. e.g. a not-found condition would lead to user-friendly error message that the username doesn't exist while everything else would create a ops ticket to investigate.

checking that bool could be magnitudes faster than trying to extract the not-found condition from an error fragment. https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2024-05-31-benchmarking-go-error-handling/ has specific numbers for this, i highly recommend checking it out.

i recommend returning a dedicated return value for describing specific conditions if those conditions will be often used to alter the caller's codeflow. search for something like "exceptions code flow antipattern" or similar keywords to see more reasons why it's unhealthy to rely on having lot of logic in error handlers.

# preconditions

suppose "func f(v *int) error" doesn't accept nil pointers. one is tempted to add a "assert(v != nil)" like logic to it. don't do it. return it as an error: if v == nil { return fmt.Errorf("mypackage.CheckNil variable=v") }.

why? if the application crashes due to this then the developer gets just a stacktrace. if it returns an error then the rest of the callers build up a "story" how the program ended up in the bad state. make sure to support this debugging experience.

though it makes no sense to add an error return value just to return errors for such bad invocation. it would be annoying if sqrt() would return (float64, error). only do this if the error return value is already there.

# metaphor

this type of error handling might feel as unnecessary busywork. medical surgeons also complained how annoying it was to wash hands or disinfect the surgical tools. after all no harm is done if they don't do it, right? it turns out the harm comes much later. once the medical profession learned this, they decided to accept the cost.

annotating errors is similar. the value of them is not apparent. the value becomes apparent when problems start arising. my hope is that the coding profession will recommend always-annotated errors too instead of exceptions-like error handling once it observes how good error messages make our lives much easier.

# references

this post was inspired by reading many other blog posts. i probably forgot to list all my sources but here are some of them i remember:

• https://preslav.me/2023/04/14/golang-error-handling-is-a-form-of-storytelling/: this is where the "errors are stories" idea came from.
• https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2024-05-31-benchmarking-go-error-handling/: explains how slow the errors are and the takeaway suggests to avoid errors for code flow.
• https://matttproud.com/blog/posts/go-errors-and-api-contracts.html: inspiration for exceptions and error domains.
• https://preslav.me/2024/06/06/error-flows-in-golang/: a post about annotating errors.
• https://akavel.com/go-errors: another post about annotating errors.

# takeaways

there's nothing wrong with error handling in go. all those error handling improvement proposals? not needed! it's good as it is.

the only problem with go's error handling is that it's verbose: needs 3 lines. i'll rant about this in my next post, stay tuned.

as a summary here are my key points from this post:

• always annotate errors with details, preferably with a unique error message.
• the explicit error return invites adding more details to the error and thus making the errors contain more useful debugging data.
• use opaque errors wherever a clear error domain doesn't apply.
• error management is slow but that's fine because that codepath should be used rarely.
• avoid control flowing on errors for common, non-exceptional cases; prefer adding an additional bool return value where it makes sense.

edits:

• 2024-10-26: replaced the original crappy error message guidance with the improved one from @/errmsg.