Re: System calls without error checks in w32

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 23:30:21 +0200
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> From: Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>
> >> Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 22:02:24 +0200
> >> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >>
> >> > If you can suggest what to do when any of these fails, please do.
> >>
> >>
> >> I have already made the suggestion below.
> >
> > How in the world outputting an error message would help here?
> 
> You mean instead of fixing the error directly? It is just a first step
> of course.
> 
> The error message might also be interesting in itself. It can for
> example tell about resources lack etc. The API descriptions does not
> always tell the whole story.

Checking values returned by system calls is necessary to avoid working
with invalid objects returned by a failed system call.  I thought you
were talking about this.

But it turns out you are talking about something else altogether: how
to debug possible failures in some APIs.  That is a different story
and it requires different solutions.  Please take a look at xdisp.c
and friends, which have special debugging code inside
#ifdef GLYPH_DEBUG.

In any case, the solution you suggest is not a good one, because it
obfuscates the source code and makes it harder to read and understand.