The Regret of Go 1.13 Error Values Proposal

At today’s GopherCon 2020, the author of the Go 1.13 error values proposal mentioned in hindsight that he regrets the lack of error formatting support, and that there will be no further improvement plans for many years to come. One of the reasons he gave is that error handling is a domain-specific problem, and it is simply beyond his ability to produce a solution that satisfies everyone. Nevertheless, at the end of his talk, he offered some advice on error wrapping — namely, implementing fmt.Formatter. Below is a simple example.

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type DetailError struct {
	msg, detail string
	err         error
}

func (e *DetailError) Unwrap() error { return e.err }

func (e *DetailError) Error() string {
	if e.err == nil {
		return e.msg
	}
	return e.msg + ": " + e.err.Error()
}

func (e *DetailError) Format(s fmt.State, c rune) {
	if s.Flag('#') && c == 'v' {
		type nomethod DetailError
		fmt.Fprintf(s, "%#v", (*nomethod)(e))
		return
	}
	if !s.Flag('+') || c != 'v' {
		fmt.Fprintf(s, spec(s, c), e.Error())
		return
	}
	fmt.Fprintln(s, e.msg)
	if e.detail != "" {
		io.WriteString(s, "\t")
		fmt.Fprintln(s, e.detail)
	}
	if e.err != nil {
		if ferr, ok := e.err.(fmt.Formatter); ok {
			ferr.Format(s, c)
		} else {
			fmt.Fprintf(s, spec(s, c), e.err)
			io.WriteString(s, "\n")
		}
	}
}

func spec(s fmt.State, c rune) string {
	buf := []byte{'%'}
	for _, f := range []int{'+', '-', '#', ' ', '0'} {
		if s.Flag(f) {
			buf = append(buf, byte(f))
		}
	}
	if w, ok := s.Width(); ok {
		buf = strconv.AppendInt(buf, int64(w), 10)
	}
	if p, ok := s.Precision(); ok {
		buf = append(buf, '.')
		buf = strconv.AppendInt(buf, int64(p), 10)
	}
	buf = append(buf, byte(c))
	return string(buf)
}

今天的 GopherCon2020 上，Go 1.13 错误值提案的作者事后提及他对目前错误格式化的缺失表示遗憾，而且在未来很长的好几年内都不会有任何进一步改进计划。对此他本人给出的原因之一是对于错误处理这一领域特定的问题，在他的能力范围内实在是无法给出一个令所有人都满意的方案。尽管如此，在他演讲的最后，还是给出了一些关于错误嵌套的建议，即实现 fmt.Formatter，下面给出了一个简单的例子。

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type DetailError struct {
	msg, detail string
	err         error
}

func (e *DetailError) Unwrap() error { return e.err }

func (e *DetailError) Error() string {
	if e.err == nil {
		return e.msg
	}
	return e.msg + ": " + e.err.Error()
}

func (e *DetailError) Format(s fmt.State, c rune) {
	if s.Flag('#') && c == 'v' {
		type nomethod DetailError
		fmt.Fprintf(s, "%#v", (*nomethod)(e))
		return
	}
	if !s.Flag('+') || c != 'v' {
		fmt.Fprintf(s, spec(s, c), e.Error())
		return
	}
	fmt.Fprintln(s, e.msg)
	if e.detail != "" {
		io.WriteString(s, "\t")
		fmt.Fprintln(s, e.detail)
	}
	if e.err != nil {
		if ferr, ok := e.err.(fmt.Formatter); ok {
			ferr.Format(s, c)
		} else {
			fmt.Fprintf(s, spec(s, c), e.err)
			io.WriteString(s, "\n")
		}
	}
}

func spec(s fmt.State, c rune) string {
	buf := []byte{'%'}
	for _, f := range []int{'+', '-', '#', ' ', '0'} {
		if s.Flag(f) {
			buf = append(buf, byte(f))
		}
	}
	if w, ok := s.Width(); ok {
		buf = strconv.AppendInt(buf, int64(w), 10)
	}
	if p, ok := s.Precision(); ok {
		buf = append(buf, '.')
		buf = strconv.AppendInt(buf, int64(p), 10)
	}
	buf = append(buf, byte(c))
	return string(buf)
}