The documentation tells me that the swap_with_slice() method can potentially panic if the slices are of two different lengths. I am writing a parser which deals with data coming across TCP. My encoding scheme is such that the following should never panic, unless it is a malformed request. In this case, I don't want my programme to crash, but instead handle the error. How do I capture whether swap_with_slice panics or not? Since it itself does not return a Result?
let mut bytes_id = [0; 16];
bytes_id.swap_with_slice(&mut self.raw_bytes[Headers::MessageLength as usize..Headers::Data as usize]);
This should work
let result = std::panic::catch_unwind(|| <expected_to_panic_operation_here>);
Related
I have a requirement like this.
Flux<Integer> s1 = .....;
s1.flatMap(value -> anotherSource.find(value));
I need a way to stop this s1 when anotherSource.find gives me first empty. how to do that?
Note:
One possible solution is to throw error then capture it to stop.
anotherSource.find(value).switchIfempty(Mono.error(..))
I am looking for better solution than this.
You won't find a specific operator for this, you'll have to combine operators to achieve it. (Note that doesn't make it a "hack" per-se, reactive frameworks are generally intended to be used in a way where you combine basic operators together to achieve your use-case.)
I would agree that using an error to achieve is far from ideal though as it potentially disrupts the flow of real errors in the reactive chain - so that should really be a last resort.
The approach I've generally taken in cases where I want the stream to stop based on an inner publisher is to materialise the inner stream, filter out the onComplete() signals and then re-add the onComplete() wherever appropriate (in this case, if it's empty.) You can then dematerialise the outer stream and it'll respond to the completed signal wherever you've injected it, stopping the stream:
s1.flatMap(
value ->
anotherSource
.find(value)
.materialize()
.filter(s -> !s.isOnComplete())
.defaultIfEmpty(Signal.complete()))
.dematerialize()
This has the advantage of preserving any error signals, while also not requiring another object or special value.
I have a GSM module hooked up to PIC18F87J11 and they communicate just fine . I can send an AT command from the Microcontroller and read the response back. However, I have to know how many characters are in the response so I can have the PIC wait for that many characters. But if an error occurs, the response length might change. What is the best way to handle such scenario?
For Example:
AT+CMGF=1
Will result in the following response.
\r\nOK\r\n
So I have to tell the PIC to wait for 6 characters. However, if there response was an error message. It would be something like this.
\r\nERROR\r\n
And if I already told the PIC to wait for only 6 characters then it will mess out the rest of characters, as a result they might appear on the next time I tell the PIC to read the response of a new AT command.
What is the best way to find the end of the line automatically and handle any error messages?
Thanks!
In a single line
There is no single best way, only trade-offs.
In detail
The problem can be divided in two related subproblems.
1. Receiving messages of arbitrary finite length
The trade-offs:
available memory vs implementation complexity;
bandwidth overhead vs implementation complexity.
In the simplest case, the amount of available RAM is not restricted. We just use a buffer wide enough to hold the longest possible message and keep receiving the messages bytewise. Then, we have to determine somehow that a complete message has been received and can be passed to further processing. That essentially means analyzing the received data.
2. Parsing the received messages
Analyzing the data in search of its syntactic structure is parsing by definition. And that is where the subtasks are related. Parsing in general is a very complex topic, dealing with it is expensive, both in computational and laboriousness senses. It's often possible to reduce the costs if we limit the genericity of the data: the simpler the data structure, the easier to parse it. And that limitation is called "transport layer protocol".
Thus, we have to read the data to parse it, and parse the data to read it. This kind of interlocked problems is generally solved with coroutines.
In your case we have to deal with the AT protocol. It is old and it is human-oriented by design. That's bad news, because parsing it correctly can be challenging despite how simple it can look sometimes. It has some terribly inconvenient features, such as '+++' escape timing!
Things become worse when you're short of memory. In such situation we can't defer parsing until the end of the message, because it very well might not even fit in the available RAM -- we have to parse it chunkwise.
...And we are not even close to opening the TCP connections or making calls! And you'll meet some unexpected troubles there as well, such as these dreaded "unsolicited result codes". The matter is wide enough for a whole book. Please have a look at least here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Serial_Programming/Modems_and_AT_Commands. The wikibook discloses many more problems with the Hayes protocol, and describes some approaches to solve them.
Let's break the problem down into some layers of abstraction.
At the top layer is your application. The application layer deals with the response message as a whole and understands the meaning of a message. It shouldn't be mired down with details such as how many characters it should expect to receive.
The next layer is responsible from framing a message from a stream of characters. Framing is extracting the message from a stream by identifying the beginning and end of a message.
The bottom layer is responsible for reading individual characters from the port.
Your application could call a function such as GetResponse(), which implements the framing layer. And GetResponse() could call GetChar(), which implements the bottom layer. It sounds like you've got the bottom layer under control and your question is about the framing layer.
A good pattern for framing a stream of characters into a message is to use a state machine. In your case the state machine includes states such as BEGIN_DELIM, MESSAGE_BODY, and END_DELIM. For more complex serial protocols other states might include MESSAGE_HEADER and MESSAGE_CHECKSUM, for example.
Here is some very basic code to give you an idea of how to implement the state machine in GetResponse(). You should add various types of error checking to prevent a buffer overflow and to handle dropped characters and such.
void GetResponse(char *message_buffer)
{
unsigned int state = BEGIN_DELIM1;
bool is_message_complete = false;
while(!is_message_complete)
{
char c = GetChar();
switch(state)
{
case BEGIN_DELIM1:
if (c = '\r')
state = BEGIN_DELIM2;
break;
case BEGIN_DELIM2:
if (c = '\n')
state = MESSAGE_BODY:
break;
case MESSAGE_BODY:
if (c = '\r')
state = END_DELIM;
else
*message_buffer++ = c;
break;
case END_DELIM:
if (c = '\n')
is_message_complete = true;
break;
}
}
}
I have a bit of a conceptual question for error handling in erlang. Let's take, for example, some database call which returns either {ok, Result}, or {error, Err}. I have a library which wraps calls to this database so I can do some pre/post-processing. When this library calls the database, should it do
A) Crash hard on an error, otherwise return the result:
{ok, Result} = db:call(), postprocess(Result).
B) Crash hard on an error, otherwise return the wrapped result:
{ok, Result} = db:call(), {ok, postprocess(Result)}.
C) Actually handle the error and return it:
case db:call() of
{ok, Result} -> {ok, postprocess(Result)};
{error, Err} -> {error, Err}
end.
D) Something else
As a follow-up question, if I have another library which is calling this one, what error propagation should it use? My thinking is that a library should be consistent with its return values, I'm just not clear on how to decide what those should potentially be.
Well, it depends on type of error, and how it should be handled.
The B) seems to be least likely to be used anywhere. Since you can not return any bad value it makes no sense to wrap it in ok tuple.
The A) seems to be a good example for database-connection library. For example when you can expect problems with connection to your database. In general you would not want each time someone makes call to your code to anticipate such case, and restart the server. The erlang way would be to crash the user, and let it's supervisor restart it in good environment, and redo the request. This approach allows for happy path coding in user side, and strong separation between your application logic and code responsible for setting up (and restarting in same way) wright environment.
Similar results could be achieved with the C) approach (and clients matching only on ok tuple), but sticking to A) might give users more idea on what to expect from your side.
The C) handling could be used when the library client can handle your error in mining full way (from point of their logic). Good example might be proplist:get_value/2 where you are either able to pattern match on {Key, Value} response or you get one atom undefined. There is no ok atom returned, but Key is enough to find happy path. And usually clients of this code can easily handle undefined (which is kind of error) in a manner mining full to their logic. And of course they could just pattern match only on happy path, and let it crach. The idea is not handling errors just for sake of handling errors; you only implement your application case.
And one more note. In your C) example you only allow {error, Error} errors to be handled. If you would like to just pass all the errors this might be better approach:
case db:call() of
{ok, Result} ->
{ok, postprocess(Result)};
Else ->
Else
end.
Consider the following class:
class Xyz {
public int count;
public void numZero (int[] x) {
// Effects: if x == null throw NullPointerException
// else return the number of occurrences of 0 in x
int count = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < x.length; i++) //we have a bug here
{
if (x[i] == 0)
{
count++;
}
}
this.count = count;
}
}
I'm trying to wrap my head about what Fault, Error and Failure really mean.
Fault
From what I've come to understand, a Fault in this context would be a flaw in the code's written logic.
So in this case the Fault would be the fact that the code instructs the computer to start iterating over all elements of v with a start index of 1 instead of the expected 0.
Error
When running the above method, we always get an Error but in once instance (when v.length == 0), as what we really want is to iterate over all elements of x, but since we're starting with i = 1, that is not really happening.
With an empty vector as input, as we don't enter the for loop, so our incorrect code isn't run, meaning that the Error doesn't happen, and everything happens as should in theory.
Failure
Since our code has a Fault that in execution-time will almost always manifest in a Error, we only have a Failure when we effectively see the incorrect output.
Assuming that an Error effectively happened in my program, we only have a Failure if it is in some way visible to the outside world. That is, had I private int count; instead of public int count; I'd never ever have an Error in my class (of course it'd be the most useless class ever!). Is this right?
Is everything I said correct or am I erring in something?
Thanks
Failure: A difference from the expected result. This is the problem
you observe.
Fault: The cause of the failure.
Error: The mistake which caused the fault to occur. e.g, typos.
An example of failure, fault and error.
pre: param is an integer.
post: returns the product of the param multiplied by 2.
1. int double (int param) {
2. int result;
3. result = param * param;
4. return result;
5. }
• A call to double(3) returns 9, but the post condition says it should return 6.
• Result 9 represents a failure.
• The failure is due to the fault at line 3, ( "* param" is used instead of "* 2")
• The error is a typo, ( someone typed "* param" instead of "* 2" by mistake).
Why give three different labels for a "Bug"?
They help communicate how precisely you know what the problem is.
Saying "failure" means you know something is wrong but don't know the cause.
Saying "fault" means you know the cause, but don't know why the fault occurred.
Saying "Error" means you know why the fault occurred; e.g.: The coder was distracted by a firetruck passing by.
You could ask, "But why did the person make a typo?" But that gets into into human factors and out of the scope of the question.
Source: Zhen Ming (Jack) Jiang - EECS 4413, Software Testing, York University.
First, a failure occurs whenever the actual service delivered by a system deviates from its expected service. Note that since even specifications can go wrong, the definition does not rely on them.
Second, an error is the part of the system state that may lead to a failure. The state of the system can go wrong but never reach the output, thus not lead to a failure.
Third, a fault is the cause of an error. It can be a design fault, a cosmic ray or whatever. If, as you point out, the fault is not activated, no error is produced.
Take a look at the basic concepts and terminology of dependability for more information.
Error is a deviation from the actual and the expected result. It represents the mistakes made by the people.
Faults are the result of an error. It is the incorrect step or process due to which the program or the software behaves in an unintended manner
Bug is an evidence of Fault in a program due to which program does not behave in an intended manner
Failure is an inability of the system or components to perform its required function. Failure occurs when Faults executes
Defect is said to be detected when Failure occurs.
There are a plurality of different definitions, the one I personally prefer is the following:
Fault -> Error -> Failure
Fault: The verified or hypothesized cause of an error (malfunctions, external interference, design errors).
Error: The manifestation of a fault within a program or data structure (difference between actual output and expected output).
Failure: The event that occurs when an error reaches the service interface, altering the service itself (leads to the inability of a system or component to perform required function according to its specification).
The Error in Error/Fault/Failure refers to the human error that introduced the problem. The human error was the incorrect thinking that caused the user to create an incorrect for statement in your example.
Errors are hard to measure or understand. It is difficult in many cases to know what the developer was thinking when the made the error that introduced the fault. That is why they like to differentiate between error and fault. We can see that there is a fault in the code, but it is hard to know why the error was created. It could be that the code was correct, and then during a subsequent change, the for loop was changed.
I always remember that an Error by a programmer leads to a fault in the code that results in a failure for the user. Not all errors result in a fault. Not all faults result in failures.
The software Fault refers to a bug in the code. And it is DURING the software activity.
While software Failure is when the system misbehaves. This is observed LATER than a fault.
Fault may be the cause for a Failure. Fault is "WHAT" and Failure is "WHEN".
Those are only fundamentals, but still I hope that it sheds some light on the matter.
To I came upon this line of code:
fprintf(stdout, "message", fflush(stdout));
Note that the message does not contain any %-tag.
Is that safe in visual c++? fflush() returns 0 on success and EOF on failure. What will fprintf() do with this extra parameter?
I first thought that this was a strange hack to add a fflush() call without needing an extra line. But written like this, the fflush() call will be executed before the fprintf() call so it does not flush the message being printed right now but the ones waiting to be flushed, if any... am I right?
It's safe. Here's what C (C99 atleast, paragraph
7.19.6.1) says about it
If the format is exhausted while
arguments remain, the excess arguments
shall be evaluated but are otherwise
ignored.
If the goal was to avoid a line, i'd rather do
fflush(stdout); fprintf(stdout, "message");
if for nothing else than to prevent the person later reading that code to hunt me down with a bat.
fprintf doesn't know the exact number of parameters, it only tries to load one argument per '%'. If you provide less arguments than '%', it results in undefined behavior, if you provide more arguments, they are ignored.
Ad second question, yes, this would only flush messages in queue, the new message won't be flushed.
I think fprintf is using varargs to process parameters, so any extra parameters should be safely ignored (not that it's a good practice or anything). And you are right that fflush will be called before fprintf, so this is kind of a pointless hack.
With enough warning flags enabled (like -Wall for gcc) you will get a warning