Class

Class Exception and its subclasses are used to communicate between Kernel#raise and rescue statements in begin ... end blocks.

An Exception object carries information about an exception:

  • Its type (the exception’s class).

  • An optional descriptive message.

  • Optional backtrace information.

Some built-in subclasses of Exception have additional methods: e.g., NameError#name.

Defaults

Two Ruby statements have default exception classes:

Global Variables

When an exception has been raised but not yet handled (in rescue, ensure, at_exit and END blocks), two global variables are set:

  • $! contains the current exception.

  • $@ contains its backtrace.

Custom Exceptions

To provide additional or alternate information, a program may create custom exception classes that derive from the built-in exception classes.

A good practice is for a library to create a single “generic” exception class (typically a subclass of StandardError or RuntimeError) and have its other exception classes derive from that class. This allows the user to rescue the generic exception, thus catching all exceptions the library may raise even if future versions of the library add new exception subclasses.

For example:

class MyLibrary
  class Error < ::StandardError
  end

  class WidgetError < Error
  end

  class FrobError < Error
  end

end

To handle both MyLibrary::WidgetError and MyLibrary::FrobError the library user can rescue MyLibrary::Error.

Built-In Exception Classes

The built-in subclasses of Exception are:

Class Methods

With no argument, or if the argument is the same as the receiver, return the receiver. Otherwise, create a new exception object of the same class as the receiver, but with a message equal to string.to_str.

Deserializes JSON string by constructing new Exception object with message m and backtrace b serialized with to_json

Construct a new Exception object, optionally passing in a message.

Returns true if exception messages will be sent to a tty.

Instance Methods

Equality—If obj is not an Exception, returns false. Otherwise, returns true if exc and obj share same class, messages, and backtrace.

Returns a hash, that will be turned into a JSON object and represent this object.

Returns any backtrace associated with the exception. The backtrace is an array of strings, each containing either “filename:lineNo: in ‘method”’ or “filename:lineNo.”

def a
  raise "boom"
end

def b
  a()
end

begin
  b()
rescue => detail
  print detail.backtrace.join("\n")
end

produces:

prog.rb:2:in `a'
prog.rb:6:in `b'
prog.rb:10

In the case no backtrace has been set, nil is returned

ex = StandardError.new
ex.backtrace
#=> nil

Returns any backtrace associated with the exception. This method is similar to Exception#backtrace, but the backtrace is an array of Thread::Backtrace::Location.

This method is not affected by Exception#set_backtrace().

Returns the previous exception ($!) at the time this exception was raised. This is useful for wrapping exceptions and retaining the original exception information.

With no argument, or if the argument is the same as the receiver, return the receiver. Otherwise, create a new exception object of the same class as the receiver, but with a message equal to string.to_str.

Returns formatted string of exception. The returned string is formatted using the same format that Ruby uses when printing an uncaught exceptions to stderr.

If highlight is true the default error handler will send the messages to a tty.

order must be either of :top or :bottom, and places the error message and the innermost backtrace come at the top or the bottom.

The default values of these options depend on $stderr and its tty? at the timing of a call.

Return this exception’s class name and message.

Returns the result of invoking exception.to_s. Normally this returns the exception’s message or name.

Sets the backtrace information associated with exc. The backtrace must be an array of String objects or a single String in the format described in Exception#backtrace.

Stores class name (Exception) with message m and backtrace array b as JSON string

Returns exception’s message (or the name of the exception if no message is set).