Catching panics in Golang

Question

With the following code, if no file argument is given, a panic is thrown for line 9 panic: runtime error: index out of range as expected.

How can I \'catch\

Answer 1

Some Golang official packages use panic/defer+recover as throw/catch, but only when they need to unwind a large call stack. In Golang's json package using panic/defer+recover as throw/catch is the most elegant solution.

from http://blog.golang.org/defer-panic-and-recover

For a real-world example of panic and recover, see the json package from the Go standard library. It decodes JSON-encoded data with a set of recursive functions. When malformed JSON is encountered, the parser calls panic to unwind the stack to the top-level function call, which recovers from the panic and returns an appropriate error value (see the 'error' and 'unmarshal' methods of the decodeState type in decode.go).

Search for d.error( at http://golang.org/src/encoding/json/decode.go

In your example the "idiomatic" solution is to check the parameters before using them, as other solutions have pointed.

But, if you want/need to catch anything you can do:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
)

func main() {

    defer func() { //catch or finally
        if err := recover(); err != nil { //catch
            fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "Exception: %v\n", err)
            os.Exit(1)
        }
    }()

    file, err := os.Open(os.Args[1])
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Could not open file")
    }

    fmt.Printf("%s", file)
}