C++ alternative to perror()

Question

I know we can use

perror()

in C to print errors. I was just wondering if there is a C++ alternative to this, or whether I have to include

Answer 1

You could do something like:

std::cerr << strerror(errno) << std::endl;

That still ends up calling strerror, so you're really just substituting one C function for another. OTOH, it does let you write via streams, instead of mixing C and C++ output, which is generally a good thing. At least AFAIK, C++ doesn't add anything to the library to act as a substitute for strerror (other than generating an std::string, I'm not sure what it would change from strerror anyway).

Answer 2

You could use the boost::system_error::error_code class.

#include <boost/system/system_error.hpp>

#include <cerrno>
#include <iostream>

void
PrintError(
        const std::string& message,
        int error
        )
{
    std::cerr << message << ": " <<
            boost::system::error_code(
                error,
                boost::system::get_system_category()
                ).message()
            << std::endl;
}

int
main()
{
    PrintError( "something went wrong!", EINVAL );
    return 0;
}

it's a tad verbose, and somewhat overkill if you aren't already using the boost_system library.