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6 Error messages

A typical Gforth error message looks like this:

     in file included from \evaluated string/:-1
     in file included from ./yyy.fs:1
     ./xxx.fs:4: Invalid memory address
     >>>bar<<<
     Backtrace:
     $400E664C @
     $400E6664 foo

The message identifying the error is Invalid memory address. The error happened when text-interpreting line 4 of the file ./xxx.fs. This line is given (it contains bar), and the word on the line where the error happened, is pointed out (with >>> and <<<).

The file containing the error was included in line 1 of ./yyy.fs, and yyy.fs was included from a non-file (in this case, by giving yyy.fs as command-line parameter to Gforth).

At the end of the error message you find a return stack dump that can be interpreted as a backtrace (possibly empty). On top you find the top of the return stack when the throw happened, and at the bottom you find the return stack entry just above the return stack of the topmost text interpreter.

To the right of most return stack entries you see a guess for the word that pushed that return stack entry as its return address. This gives a backtrace. In our case we see that bar called foo, and foo called @ (and @ had an Invalid memory address exception).

Note that the backtrace is not perfect: We don't know which return stack entries are return addresses (so we may get false positives); and in some cases (e.g., for abort") we cannot determine from the return address the word that pushed the return address, so for some return addresses you see no names in the return stack dump.

The return stack dump represents the return stack at the time when a specific throw was executed. In programs that make use of catch, it is not necessarily clear which throw should be used for the return stack dump (e.g., consider one throw that indicates an error, which is caught, and during recovery another error happens; which throw should be used for the stack dump?). Gforth presents the return stack dump for the first throw after the last executed (not returned-to) catch or nothrow; this works well in the usual case. To get the right backtrace, you usually want to insert nothrow or ['] false catch drop after a catch if the error is not rethrown.

Gforth is able to do a return stack dump for throws generated from primitives (e.g., invalid memory address, stack empty etc.); gforth-fast is only able to do a return stack dump from a directly called throw (including abort etc.). Given an exception caused by a primitive in gforth-fast, you will typically see no return stack dump at all; however, if the exception is caught by catch (e.g., for restoring some state), and then thrown again, the return stack dump will be for the first such throw.