Get a 'clear' error message in Lua
error-handling, lua
Solution
From the documentation of the `error` function:
`error (message [, level])`
Terminates the last protected function called and returns `message` as the error message. Function `error` never returns.
Usually, `error` adds some information about the error position at the beginning of the message, if the message is a string. The `level` argument specifies how to get the error position. With level 1 (the default), the error position is where the `error` function was called. Level 2 points the error to where the function that called `error` was called; and so on. Passing a level 0 avoids the addition of error position information to the message.
From what is stated in the second paragraph, adding a level of `0` to the `error` call will result in the desired output:
error("Connection timed out!", 0)
Problem
I am using the `error` function in quite a few of my functions and would like to propagate the error messages to the user. However, I obviously don't want to include information about where the error occured exactly; this information should only go to the log files. For example, I have a class that manages the connection to a server. If the connection times out, it calls ``` error("Connection timed out!") ``` The error message is then caught by the calling code via `pcall`. However, the message contains not only the message I passed, but also the name of the file that caused the error and the line number: ``` common/net/enetclient.lua:21: Connection timed out! ``` The question is: Is there any way to only retrieve the error message itself, or do I have to do this manually like following: ``` local status, msg = pcall(someFunctionThatThrowsErrors) if not status then local file, msg = msg:match("(.-:%d+): (.+)") print("Error: " .. msg) end ``` Cheers,