Robust Error Handling
Implement strategic error handling using try/catch, exit signals, and trapping exits to gracefully manage failures.
Erlang's Error Philosophy
Erlang is renowned for its fault tolerance. This isn't achieved by preventing all errors, but by expecting them and designing systems that can recover gracefully. We embrace the idea of 'let it crash' where appropriate, allowing supervisors to handle failures.
Catching Internal Errors
For errors that occur within a single process, Erlang provides the try...catch construct. This is useful for handling expected, localized issues like invalid function arguments, file not found errors, or custom application-specific exceptions.
It works similarly to exception handling in other languages, but it's less common for handling failures between different processes.
All lessons in this course
- Links and Monitors Explained
- Robust Error Handling
- Designing for Crash-First
- The Let-It-Crash Philosophy