GLib – 2.0: Warnings and Assertions
Description: Reference for GLib-2.0: Warnings and Assertions

#### Warnings and Assertions

GLib defines several warning functions and assertions which can be used to warn of programmer errors when calling functions, and print error messages from command line programs.

## Pre-condition Assertions

The `g_return_if_fail()`, `g_return_val_if_fail()`, `g_return_if_reached()` and `g_return_val_if_reached()` macros are intended as pre-condition assertions, to be used at the top of a public function to check that the function’s arguments are acceptable. Any failure of such a pre-condition assertion is considered a programming error on the part of the caller of the public API, and the program is considered to be in an undefined state afterwards. They are similar to the libc `assert()` function, but provide more context on failures.

For example:

    gboolean
    g_dtls_connection_shutdown (GDtlsConnection  *conn,
                                gboolean          shutdown_read,
                                gboolean          shutdown_write,
                                GCancellable     *cancellable,
                                GError          **error)
    {
      // local variable declarations

      g_return_val_if_fail (G_IS_DTLS_CONNECTION (conn), FALSE);
      g_return_val_if_fail (cancellable == NULL || G_IS_CANCELLABLE (cancellable), FALSE);
      g_return_val_if_fail (error == NULL || *error == NULL, FALSE);

      // function body

      return return_val;
    }

`g_warn_if_fail()` and `g_warn_if_reached()` behave similarly, but they will not abort the program on failure. The program should be considered to be in an undefined state if they fail, however.

## Messages

`g_print()` and `g_printerr()` are intended to be used for output from command line applications, since they output to standard output and standard error by default — whereas functions like `g_message()` and `g_log()` may be redirected to special purpose message windows, files, or the system journal.

The default print handlers may be overridden with `g_set_print_handler()` and `g_set_printerr_handler()`.

### Encoding

If the console encoding is not UTF-8 (as specified by `g_get_console_charset()`) then these functions convert the message first. Any Unicode characters not defined by that charset are replaced by `'?'`. On Linux, `setlocale()` must be called early in `main()` to load the encoding. This behaviour can be changed by providing custom handlers to `g_set_print_handler()`, `g_set_printerr_handler()` and `g_log_set_handler()`.

## Debugging Utilities

- `g_on_error_query()`
- `g_on_error_stack_trace()`
- `G_BREAKPOINT()`