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    Error Messages in ITEX

This chapter contains a general description of how error messages in ITEX are structured, information about why some error messages are accompanied by a message on the standard output stream and information about how some error messages should be interpreted.

However, this chapter does not provide detailed information about specific error messages.

Table of Contents 

Error Messages

All user actions can potentially lead to an error, either because the user has made an improper action or because some system imposed limitation has been violated.

Note that all messages are not necessarily error messages, there are query and information messages as well.

The Structure of Error Messages

Error messages are based on information from three separate sources:

  1. Tools/commands
  2. ITEX core
  3. System

The first part is always present in an error message but the other two may be inapplicable to some error messages.


Example 131       

Open: Operation failure
Can not open the file /home/users/user/suite.itex-lock
Permission denied


The example above notifies you about a failed attempt to open a test suite due to you insufficient privileges to create the lock file that should automatically be created when a test suite is opened or created. Observe that as the lock file is created before any attempt is done to open the test suite, the error messages often refer to that file instead of the test suite files.

The following are examples of when the second and third parts are missing and when the third part is missing respectively.


Example 132       

Replace: Illegal search pattern: \(foo      


Example 133       

Find table: Can not open foo
No such object


Additional Error Messages on Standard Error

The reason for additional messages on standard error in some situations, is that some functionality is accomplished by calling shell commands. If any of those shell commands fail, they write a short message to the standard error output stream. Those messages can sometimes provide additional information about why the error occurred.

Messages When Starting ITEX

When starting ITEX some error messages referring to OSF (e.g. osfBeginLine etc.) may be displayed. These messages indicate a problem in the installation related to the file XKeysymDB.

The Meaning of Error Messages

Sometimes the error messages may be a bit difficult to understand. The following list is an attempt to give some additional clues to why some errors occur and what the error messages mean:

Note: 

The reason for a failed cut or copy operation may be that the selection contains items that cannot sensibly be pasted together.


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