Rust is a popular programming language used mainly for systems programming stated Bahaa Al Zubaidi. Its unique features have led to developers quickly adopting to it. While using any programming language, it is important to handle errors efficiently. We look at some of the best practices being following for error handling in Rust.

Error handling in Rust

A significant feature of Rust is that it allows error handling at run time without throwing up exceptions. While programming with Rust there are two types of errors you will deal with. One is recoverable errors and the other unrecoverable errors.

  1. a) Recoverable errors

Your program can recover from these type of errors when encountered. Consider an example: Your program may be trying to open a file that does not exist. It is possible to create the file and recover from the error. When recoverable errors are found, Rust would denote it with the enum Result<, E>.

  1. b) Unrecoverable errors

An unrecoverable error is one from which your program cannot recover. When such an error is found, Rust activates the macro panic! For example, your program may be trying to access a location that is beyond the boundary of the array. The panic macro would stop the program execution, unwind, and then clean up the stack.

As a programmer you must take care of the following:

  • Ensure that all errors are handled explicitly.
  • Do ensure that error messages are provided so there is clarity.
  • Use the ‘Result’ and ‘Option’ types effectively to handle errors. These tools help you create error messages that are informative.
  • Log errors for debugging. You can use the log or the env_logger logging libraries for this purpose.
  • Depending on the application’s context choose an appropriate error handling strategy. Some of the error handling strategies that you can consider include:
  • Ignoring the error where possible.
  • Ensuring the program terminates.
  • Make use of a fallback value for error handling.
  • Bubbling up errors.
  • Create custom errors.
  • The error handling mechanism in Rust is robust. Use it to write code that is reliable as well as resilient.

The above best practices can help you ensure error handling in the most efficient way. Following these practices will help you get the best out of Rust for your programming projects. You can thus ensure that the Rust program you write is efficient and safe. Thank you for your interest in Bahaa Al Zubaidi blogs. For more information, please visit www.bahaaalzubaidi.com.