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Feature #8257

closed

Exception#cause to carry originating exception along with new one

Added by headius (Charles Nutter) almost 11 years ago. Updated over 2 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Target version:
-
[ruby-core:54185]

Description

Often when a lower-level API raises an exception, we would like to re-raise a different exception specific to our API or library. Currently in Ruby, only our new exception is ever seen by users; the original exception is lost forever, unless the user decides to dig around our library and log it. We need a way to have an exception carry a "cause" along with it.

Java has getCause/setCause and standard constructors that take a cause exception. Printing out an exception's backtrace then reports both that exception and any "cause" exception.

Rubinius has added a similar feature: https://gist.github.com/dbussink/b2e01e51d0c50b27004f

The changes required for this feature are pretty benign:

  • Exception#cause and #cause= accessors.
  • A new set of Kernel#raise overloads that accept (as a trailing argument, probably) the "cause" exception.
  • Modifications to backtrace-printing logic to also display backtrace information from the "cause" exception (and in turn, from any nested "cause" exceptions).

There's some discussion here about alternatives to #cause, none of which are quite as elegant as having it built in: http://www.skorks.com/2013/04/ruby-why-u-no-have-nested-exceptions/


Related issues 1 (0 open1 closed)

Related to Ruby master - Bug #9338: Build failure of trunk with MSVC 2013Closed01/01/2014Actions
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