8.1.1 Prerequisites

As well as base R functions, this chapter uses condition signalling and handling functions from rlang.

library(rlang)

8.2.1 Errors

In base R, errors are signalled, or thrown, by stop():

f <- function() g()
g <- function() h()
h <- function() stop("This is an error!")

f()
#> Error in h(): This is an error!

By default, the error message includes the call, but this is typically not useful (and recapitulates information that you can easily get from traceback()), so I think it’s good practice to use call. = FALSE⁴⁶:

h <- function() stop("This is an error!", call. = FALSE)
f()
#> Error: This is an error!

The rlang equivalent to stop(), rlang::abort(), does this automatically. We’ll use abort() throughout this chapter, but we won’t get to its most compelling feature, the ability to add additional metadata to the condition object, until we’re near the end of the chapter.

h <- function() abort("This is an error!")
f()
#> Error: This is an error!

(NB: stop() pastes together multiple inputs, while abort() does not. To create complex error messages with abort, I recommend using glue::glue(). This allows us to use other arguments to abort() for useful features that you’ll learn about in Section 8.5.)

The best error messages tell you what is wrong and point you in the right direction to fix the problem. Writing good error messages is hard because errors usually occur when the user has a flawed mental model of the function. As a developer, it’s hard to imagine how the user might be thinking incorrectly about your function, and thus it’s hard to write a message that will steer the user in the correct direction. That said, the tidyverse style guide discusses a few general principles that we have found useful: http://style.tidyverse.org/error-messages.html.

8.2.2 Warnings

Warnings, signalled by warning(), are weaker than errors: they signal that something has gone wrong, but the code has been able to recover and continue. Unlike errors, you can have multiple warnings from a single function call:

fw <- function() {
  cat("1\n")
  warning("W1")
  cat("2\n")
  warning("W2")
  cat("3\n")
  warning("W3")
}

By default, warnings are cached and printed only when control returns to the top level:

fw()
#> 1
#> 2
#> 3
#> Warning messages:
#> 1: In f() : W1
#> 2: In f() : W2
#> 3: In f() : W3

You can control this behaviour with the warn option:

• To make warnings appear immediately, set options(warn = 1).

• To turn warnings into errors, set options(warn = 2). This is usually the easiest way to debug a warning, as once it’s an error you can use tools like traceback() to find the source.

• Restore the default behaviour with options(warn = 0).

Like stop(), warning() also has a call argument. It is slightly more useful (since warnings are often more distant from their source), but I still generally suppress it with call. = FALSE. Like rlang::abort(), the rlang equivalent of warning(), rlang::warn(), also suppresses the call. by default.

Warnings occupy a somewhat challenging place between messages (“you should know about this”) and errors (“you must fix this!”), and it’s hard to give precise advice on when to use them. Generally, be restrained, as warnings are easy to miss if there’s a lot of other output, and you don’t want your function to recover too easily from clearly invalid input. In my opinion, base R tends to overuse warnings, and many warnings in base R would be better off as errors. For example, I think these warnings would be more helpful as errors:

formals(1)
#> Warning in formals(fun): argument is not a function
#> NULL

file.remove("this-file-doesn't-exist")
#> Warning in file.remove("this-file-doesn't-exist"): cannot remove file 'this-
#> file-doesn't-exist', reason 'No such file or directory'
#> [1] FALSE

lag(1:3, k = 1.5)
#> Warning in lag.default(1:3, k = 1.5): 'k' is not an integer
#> [1] 1 2 3
#> attr(,"tsp")
#> [1] -1  1  1

as.numeric(c("18", "30", "50+", "345,678"))
#> Warning: NAs introduced by coercion
#> [1] 18 30 NA NA

There are only a couple of cases where using a warning is clearly appropriate:

• When you deprecate a function you want to allow older code to continue to work (so ignoring the warning is OK) but you want to encourage the user to switch to a new function.

• When you are reasonably certain you can recover from a problem: If you were 100% certain that you could fix the problem, you wouldn’t need any message; if you were more uncertain that you could correctly fix the issue, you’d throw an error.

Otherwise use warnings with restraint, and carefully consider if an error would be more appropriate.

8.2.3 Messages

Messages, signalled by message(), are informational; use them to tell the user that you’ve done something on their behalf. Good messages are a balancing act: you want to provide just enough information so the user knows what’s going on, but not so much that they’re overwhelmed.

message()s are displayed immediately and do not have a call. argument:

fm <- function() {
  cat("1\n")
  message("M1")
  cat("2\n")
  message("M2")
  cat("3\n")
  message("M3")
}

fm()
#> 1
#> M1
#> 2
#> M2
#> 3
#> M3

Good places to use a message are:

• When a default argument requires some non-trivial amount of computation and you want to tell the user what value was used. For example, ggplot2 reports the number of bins used if you don’t supply a binwidth.

• In functions that are called primarily for their side-effects which would otherwise be silent. For example, when writing files to disk, calling a web API, or writing to a database, it’s useful to provide regular status messages telling the user what’s happening.

• When you’re about to start a long running process with no intermediate output. A progress bar (e.g. with progress) is better, but a message is a good place to start.

• When writing a package, you sometimes want to display a message when your package is loaded (i.e. in .onAttach()); here you must use packageStartupMessage().

Generally any function that produces a message should have some way to suppress it, like a quiet = TRUE argument. It is possible to suppress all messages with suppressMessages(), as you’ll learn shortly, but it is nice to also give finer grained control.

It’s important to compare message() to the closely related cat(). In terms of usage and result, they appear quite similar⁴⁷:

cat("Hi!\n")
#> Hi!

message("Hi!")
#> Hi!

However, the purposes of cat() and message() are different. Use cat() when the primary role of the function is to print to the console, like print() or str() methods. Use message() as a side-channel to print to the console when the primary purpose of the function is something else. In other words, cat() is for when the user asks for something to be printed and message() is for when the developer elects to print something.

8.2.4 Exercises

1. Write a wrapper around file.remove() that throws an error if the file to be deleted does not exist.

2. What does the appendLF argument to message() do? How is it related to cat()?

8.4.1 Condition objects

So far we’ve just signalled conditions, and not looked at the objects that are created behind the scenes. The easiest way to see a condition object is to catch one from a signalled condition. That’s the job of rlang::catch_cnd():

cnd <- catch_cnd(stop("An error"))
str(cnd)
#> List of 2
#>  $ message: chr "An error"
#>  $ call   : language force(expr)
#>  - attr(*, "class")= chr [1:3] "simpleError" "error" "condition"

Built-in conditions are lists with two elements:

• message, a length-1 character vector containing the text to display to a user. To extract the message, use conditionMessage(cnd).

• call, the call which triggered the condition. As described above, we don’t use the call, so it will often be NULL. To extract it, use conditionCall(cnd).

Custom conditions may contain other components, which we’ll discuss in Section 8.5.

Conditions also have a class attribute, which makes them S3 objects. We won’t discuss S3 until Chapter 13, but fortunately, even if you don’t know about S3, condition objects are quite simple. The most important thing to know is that the class attribute is a character vector, and it determines which handlers will match the condition.

8.4.2 Exiting handlers

tryCatch() registers exiting handlers, and is typically used to handle error conditions. It allows you to override the default error behaviour. For example, the following code will return NA instead of throwing an error:

f3 <- function(x) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) NA,
    log(x)
  )
}

f3("x")
#> [1] NA

If no conditions are signalled, or the class of the signalled condition does not match the handler name, the code executes normally:

tryCatch(
  error = function(cnd) 10,
  1 + 1
)
#> [1] 2

tryCatch(
  error = function(cnd) 10,
  {
    message("Hi!")
    1 + 1
  }
)
#> Hi!
#> [1] 2

The handlers set up by tryCatch() are called exiting handlers because after the condition is signalled, control passes to the handler and never returns to the original code, effectively meaning that the code exits:

tryCatch(
  message = function(cnd) "There",
  {
    message("Here")
    stop("This code is never run!")
  }
)
#> [1] "There"

The protected code is evaluated in the environment of tryCatch(), but the handler code is not, because the handlers are functions. This is important to remember if you’re trying to modify objects in the parent environment.

The handler functions are called with a single argument, the condition object. I call this argument cnd, by convention. This value is only moderately useful for the base conditions because they contain relatively little data. It’s more useful when you make your own custom conditions, as you’ll see shortly.

tryCatch(
  error = function(cnd) {
    paste0("--", conditionMessage(cnd), "--")
  },
  stop("This is an error")
)
#> [1] "--This is an error--"

tryCatch() has one other argument: finally. It specifies a block of code (not a function) to run regardless of whether the initial expression succeeds or fails. This can be useful for clean up, like deleting files, or closing connections. This is functionally equivalent to using on.exit() (and indeed that’s how it’s implemented) but it can wrap smaller chunks of code than an entire function.

path <- tempfile()
tryCatch(
  {
    writeLines("Hi!", path)
    # ...
  },
  finally = {
    # always run
    unlink(path)
  }
)

8.4.3 Calling handlers

The handlers set up by tryCatch() are called exiting handlers, because they cause code to exit once the condition has been caught. By contrast, withCallingHandlers() sets up calling handlers: code execution continues normally once the handler returns. This tends to make withCallingHandlers() a more natural pairing with the non-error conditions. Exiting and calling handlers use “handler” in slighty different senses:

• An exiting handler handles a signal like you handle a problem; it makes the problem go away.

• A calling handler handles a signal like you handle a car; the car still exists.

Compare the results of tryCatch() and withCallingHandlers() in the example below. The messages are not printed in the first case, because the code is terminated once the exiting handler completes. They are printed in the second case, because a calling handler does not exit.

tryCatch(
  message = function(cnd) cat("Caught a message!\n"), 
  {
    message("Someone there?")
    message("Why, yes!")
  }
)
#> Caught a message!

withCallingHandlers(
  message = function(cnd) cat("Caught a message!\n"), 
  {
    message("Someone there?")
    message("Why, yes!")
  }
)
#> Caught a message!
#> Someone there?
#> Caught a message!
#> Why, yes!

Handlers are applied in order, so you don’t need to worry about getting caught in an infinite loop. In the following example, the message() signalled by the handler doesn’t also get caught:

withCallingHandlers(
  message = function(cnd) message("Second message"),
  message("First message")
)
#> Second message
#> First message

(But beware if you have multiple handlers, and some handlers signal conditions that could be captured by another handler: you’ll need to think through the order carefully.)

The return value of a calling handler is ignored because the code continues to execute after the handler completes; where would the return value go? That means that calling handlers are only useful for their side-effects.

One important side-effect unique to calling handlers is the ability to muffle the signal. By default, a condition will continue to propagate to parent handlers, all the way up to the default handler (or an exiting handler, if provided):

# Bubbles all the way up to default handler which generates the message
withCallingHandlers(
  message = function(cnd) cat("Level 2\n"),
  withCallingHandlers(
    message = function(cnd) cat("Level 1\n"),
    message("Hello")
  )
)
#> Level 1
#> Level 2
#> Hello

# Bubbles up to tryCatch
tryCatch(
  message = function(cnd) cat("Level 2\n"),
  withCallingHandlers(
    message = function(cnd) cat("Level 1\n"),
    message("Hello")
  )
)
#> Level 1
#> Level 2

If you want to prevent the condition “bubbling up” but still run the rest of the code in the block, you need to explicitly muffle it with rlang::cnd_muffle():

# Muffles the default handler which prints the messages
withCallingHandlers(
  message = function(cnd) {
    cat("Level 2\n")
    cnd_muffle(cnd)
  },
  withCallingHandlers(
    message = function(cnd) cat("Level 1\n"),
    message("Hello")
  )
)
#> Level 1
#> Level 2

# Muffles level 2 handler and the default handler
withCallingHandlers(
  message = function(cnd) cat("Level 2\n"),
  withCallingHandlers(
    message = function(cnd) {
      cat("Level 1\n")
      cnd_muffle(cnd)
    },
    message("Hello")
  )
)
#> Level 1

8.4.4 Call stacks

To complete the section, there are some important differences between the call stacks of exiting and calling handlers. These differences are generally not important but I’m including them here because I’ve occasionally found them useful, and don’t want to forget about them!

It’s easiest to see the difference by setting up a small example that uses lobstr::cst():

f <- function() g()
g <- function() h()
h <- function() message("!")

Calling handlers are called in the context of the call that signalled the condition:

withCallingHandlers(f(), message = function(cnd) {
  lobstr::cst()
  cnd_muffle(cnd)
})
#>      █
#>   1. ├─base::withCallingHandlers(...)
#>   2. ├─global::f()
#>   3. │ └─global::g()
#>   4. │   └─global::h()
#>   5. │     └─base::message("!")
#>   6. │       ├─base::withRestarts(...)
#>   7. │       │ └─base:::withOneRestart(expr, restarts[[1L]])
#>   8. │       │   └─base:::doWithOneRestart(return(expr), restart)
#>   9. │       └─base::signalCondition(cond)
#>  10. └─(function (cnd) ...
#>  11.   └─lobstr::cst()

Whereas exiting handlers are called in the context of the call to tryCatch():

tryCatch(f(), message = function(cnd) lobstr::cst())
#>     █
#>  1. └─base::tryCatch(f(), message = function(cnd) lobstr::cst())
#>  2.   └─base:::tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
#>  3.     └─base:::tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
#>  4.       └─value[[3L]](cond)
#>  5.         └─lobstr::cst()

8.4.5 Exercises

1. What extra information does the condition generated by abort() contain compared to the condition generated by stop() i.e. what’s the difference between these two objects? Read the help for ?abort to learn more.

   catch_cnd(stop("An error"))
   catch_cnd(abort("An error"))

2. Predict the results of evaluating the following code

   show_condition <- function(code) {
     tryCatch(
       error = function(cnd) "error",
       warning = function(cnd) "warning",
       message = function(cnd) "message",
       {
         code
         NULL
       }
     )
   }
   
   show_condition(stop("!"))
   show_condition(10)
   show_condition(warning("?!"))
   show_condition({
     10
     message("?")
     warning("?!")
   })

3. Explain the results of running this code:

   withCallingHandlers(
     message = function(cnd) message("b"),
     withCallingHandlers(
       message = function(cnd) message("a"),
       message("c")
     )
   )
   #> b
   #> a
   #> b
   #> c

4. Read the source code for catch_cnd() and explain how it works.

5. How could you rewrite show_condition() to use a single handler?

8.5.1 Motivation

To explore these ideas in more depth, let’s take base::log(). It does the minimum when throwing errors caused by invalid arguments:

log(letters)
#> Error in log(letters): non-numeric argument to mathematical function
log(1:10, base = letters)
#> Error in log(1:10, base = letters): non-numeric argument to mathematical
#> function

I think we can do better by being explicit about which argument is the problem (i.e. x or base), and saying what the problematic input is (not just what it isn’t).

my_log <- function(x, base = exp(1)) {
  if (!is.numeric(x)) {
    abort(paste0(
      "`x` must be a numeric vector; not ", typeof(x), "."
    ))
  }
  if (!is.numeric(base)) {
    abort(paste0(
      "`base` must be a numeric vector; not ", typeof(base), "."
    ))
  }

  base::log(x, base = base)
}

This gives us:

my_log(letters)
#> Error: `x` must be a numeric vector; not character.
my_log(1:10, base = letters)
#> Error: `base` must be a numeric vector; not character.

This is an improvement for interactive usage as the error messages are more likely to guide the user towards a correct fix. However, they’re no better if you want to programmatically handle the errors: all the useful metadata about the error is jammed into a single string.

8.5.2 Signalling

Let’s build some infrastructure to improve this situation, We’ll start by providing a custom abort() function for bad arguments. This is a little over-generalised for the example at hand, but it reflects common patterns that I’ve seen across other functions. The pattern is fairly simple. We create a nice error message for the user, using glue::glue(), and store metadata in the condition call for the developer.

abort_bad_argument <- function(arg, must, not = NULL) {
  msg <- glue::glue("`{arg}` must {must}")
  if (!is.null(not)) {
    not <- typeof(not)
    msg <- glue::glue("{msg}; not {not}.")
  }
  
  abort("error_bad_argument", 
    message = msg, 
    arg = arg, 
    must = must, 
    not = not
  )
}

stop_custom <- function(.subclass, message, call = NULL, ...) {
  err <- structure(
    list(
      message = message,
      call = call,
      ...
    ),
    class = c(.subclass, "error", "condition")
  )
  stop(err)
}

err <- catch_cnd(
  stop_custom("error_new", "This is a custom error", x = 10)
)
class(err)
err$x

We can now rewrite my_log() to use this new helper:

my_log <- function(x, base = exp(1)) {
  if (!is.numeric(x)) {
    abort_bad_argument("x", must = "be numeric", not = x)
  }
  if (!is.numeric(base)) {
    abort_bad_argument("base", must = "be numeric", not = base)
  }

  base::log(x, base = base)
}

my_log() itself is not much shorter, but is a little more meangingful, and it ensures that error messages for bad arguments are consistent across functions. It yields the same interactive error messages as before:

my_log(letters)
#> Error: `x` must be numeric; not character.
my_log(1:10, base = letters)
#> Error: `base` must be numeric; not character.

8.5.3 Handling

These structured condition objects are much easier to program with. The first place you might want to use this capability is when testing your function. Unit testing is not a subject of this book (see R packages for details), but the basics are easy to understand. The following code captures the error, and then asserts it has the structure that we expect.

library(testthat)

err <- catch_cnd(my_log("a"))
expect_s3_class(err, "error_bad_argument")
expect_equal(err$arg, "x")
expect_equal(err$not, "character")

We can also use the class (error_bad_argument) in tryCatch() to only handle that specific error:

tryCatch(
  error_bad_argument = function(cnd) "bad_argument",
  error = function(cnd) "other error",
  my_log("a")
)
#> [1] "bad_argument"

When using tryCatch() with multiple handlers and custom classes, the first handler to match any class in the signal’s class vector is called, not the best match. For this reason, you need to make sure to put the most specific handlers first. The following code does not do what you might hope:

tryCatch(
  error = function(cnd) "other error",
  error_bad_argument = function(cnd) "bad_argument",
  my_log("a")
)
#> [1] "other error"

8.5.4 Exercises

1. Inside a package, it’s occasionally useful to check that a package is installed before using it. Write a function that checks if a package is installed (with requireNamespace("pkg", quietly = FALSE)) and if not, throws a custom condition that includes the package name in the metadata.

2. Inside a package you often need to stop with an error when something is not right. Other packages that depend on your package might be tempted to check these errors in their unit tests. How could you help these packages to avoid relying on the error message which is part of the user interface rather than the API and might change without notice?

8.6.1 Failure value

There are a few simple, but useful, tryCatch() patterns based on returning a value from the error handler. The simplest case is a wrapper to return a default value if an error occurs:

fail_with <- function(expr, value = NULL) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) value,
    expr
  )
}

fail_with(log(10), NA_real_)
#> [1] 2.3
fail_with(log("x"), NA_real_)
#> [1] NA

A more sophisticated application is base::try(). Below, try2() extracts the essence of base::try(); the real function is more complicated in order to make the error message look more like what you’d see if tryCatch() wasn’t used.

try2 <- function(expr, silent = FALSE) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) {
      msg <- conditionMessage(cnd)
      if (!silent) {
        message("Error: ", msg)
      }
      structure(msg, class = "try-error")
    },
    expr
  )
}

try2(1)
#> [1] 1
try2(stop("Hi"))
#> Error: Hi
#> [1] "Hi"
#> attr(,"class")
#> [1] "try-error"
try2(stop("Hi"), silent = TRUE)
#> [1] "Hi"
#> attr(,"class")
#> [1] "try-error"

8.6.2 Success and failure values

We can extend this pattern to return one value if the code evaluates successfully (success_val), and another if it fails (error_val). This pattern just requires one small trick: evaluating the user supplied code, then success_val. If the code throws an error, we’ll never get to success_val and will instead return error_val.

foo <- function(expr) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) error_val,
    {
      expr
      success_val
    }
  )
}

We can use this to determine if an expression fails:

does_error <- function(expr) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) TRUE,
    {
      expr
      FALSE
    }
  )
}

Or to capture any condition, like just rlang::catch_cnd():

catch_cnd <- function(expr) {
  tryCatch(
    condition = function(cnd) cnd, 
    {
      expr
      NULL
    }
  )
}

We can also use this pattern to create a try() variant. One challenge with try() is that it’s slightly challenging to determine if the code succeeded or failed. Rather than returning an object with a special class, I think it’s slightly nicer to return a list with two components result and error.

safety <- function(expr) {
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) {
      list(result = NULL, error = cnd)
    },
    list(result = expr, error = NULL)
  )
}

str(safety(1 + 10))
#> List of 2
#>  $ result: num 11
#>  $ error : NULL
str(safety(stop("Error!")))
#> List of 2
#>  $ result: NULL
#>  $ error :List of 2
#>   ..$ message: chr "Error!"
#>   ..$ call   : language doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
#>   ..- attr(*, "class")= chr [1:3] "simpleError" "error" "condition"

(This is closely related to purrr::safely(), a function operator, which we’ll come back to in Section 11.2.1.)

8.6.3 Resignal

As well as returning default values when a condition is signalled, handlers can be used to make more informative error messages. One simple application is to make a function that works like options(warn = 2) for a single block of code. The idea is simple: we handle warnings by throwing an error:

warning2error <- function(expr) {
  withCallingHandlers(
    warning = function(cnd) abort(conditionMessage(cnd)),
    expr
  )
}

warning2error({
  x <- 2 ^ 4
  warn("Hello")
})
#> Error: Hello

You could write a similar function if you were trying to find the source of an annoying message. More on this in Section 22.6.

8.6.4 Record

Another common pattern is to record conditions for later investigation. The new challenge here is that calling handlers are called only for their side-effects so we can’t return values, but instead need to modify some object in place.

catch_cnds <- function(expr) {
  conds <- list()
  add_cond <- function(cnd) {
    conds <<- append(conds, list(cnd))
    cnd_muffle(cnd)
  }
  
  withCallingHandlers(
    message = add_cond,
    warning = add_cond,
    expr
  )
  
  conds
}

catch_cnds({
  inform("a")
  warn("b")
  inform("c")
})
#> [[1]]
#> <message: a
#> >
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> <warning: b>
#> 
#> [[3]]
#> <message: c
#> >

What if you also want to capture errors? You’ll need to wrap the withCallingHandlers() in a tryCatch(). If an error occurs, it will be the last condition.

catch_cnds <- function(expr) {
  conds <- list()
  add_cond <- function(cnd) {
    conds <<- append(conds, list(cnd))
    cnd_muffle(cnd)
  }
  
  tryCatch(
    error = function(cnd) {
      conds <<- append(conds, list(cnd))
    },
    withCallingHandlers(
      message = add_cond,
      warning = add_cond,
      expr
    )
  )
  
  conds
}

catch_cnds({
  inform("a")
  warn("b")
  abort("C")
})
#> [[1]]
#> <message: a
#> >
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> <warning: b>
#> 
#> [[3]]
#> <error/rlang_error>
#> C
#> Backtrace:
#>  1. global::catch_cnds(...)
#>  6. base::withCallingHandlers(...)

This is the key idea underlying the evaluate package⁵⁰ which powers knitr: it captures every output into a special data structure so that it can be later replayed. As a whole, the evaluate package is quite a lot more complicated than the code here because it also needs to handle plots and text output.

8.6.5 No default behaviour

A final useful pattern is to signal a condition that doesn’t inherit from message, warning or error. Because there is no default behaviour, this means the condition has no effect unless the user specifically requests it. For example, you could imagine a logging system based on conditions:

log <- function(message, level = c("info", "error", "fatal")) {
  level <- match.arg(level)
  signal(message, "log", level = level)
}

When you call log() a condition is signalled, but nothing happens because it has no default handler:

log("This code was run")

To activate logging you need a handler that does something with the log condition. Below I define a record_log() function that will record all logging messages to a file:

record_log <- function(expr, path = stdout()) {
  withCallingHandlers(
    log = function(cnd) {
      cat(
        "[", cnd$level, "] ", cnd$message, "\n", sep = "",
        file = path, append = TRUE
      )
    },
    expr
  )
}

record_log(log("Hello"))
#> [info] Hello

You could even imagine layering with another function that allows you to selectively suppress some logging levels.

ignore_log_levels <- function(expr, levels) {
  withCallingHandlers(
    log = function(cnd) {
      if (cnd$level %in% levels) {
        cnd_muffle(cnd)
      }
    },
    expr
  )
}

record_log(ignore_log_levels(log("Hello"), "info"))

withRestarts(signalCondition(cond), muffle = function() NULL)

8.6.6 Exercises

1. Create suppressConditions() that works like suppressMessages() and suppressWarnings() but suppresses everything. Think carefully about how you should handle errors.

2. Compare the following two implementations of message2error(). What is the main advantage of withCallingHandlers() in this scenario? (Hint: look carefully at the traceback.)

   message2error <- function(code) {
     withCallingHandlers(code, message = function(e) stop(e))
   }
   message2error <- function(code) {
     tryCatch(code, message = function(e) stop(e))
   }

3. How would you modify the catch_cnds() definition if you wanted to recreate the original intermingling of warnings and messages?

4. Why is catching interrupts dangerous? Run this code to find out.

   bottles_of_beer <- function(i = 99) {
     message(
       "There are ", i, " bottles of beer on the wall, ", 
       i, " bottles of beer."
     )
     while(i > 0) {
       tryCatch(
         Sys.sleep(1),
         interrupt = function(err) {
           i <<- i - 1
           if (i > 0) {
             message(
               "Take one down, pass it around, ", i, 
               " bottle", if (i > 1) "s", " of beer on the wall."
             )
           }
         }
       )
     }
     message(
       "No more bottles of beer on the wall, ", 
       "no more bottles of beer."
     )
   }