This page is meant to collect and organize feedback and discussion started with the Go 2 error handling draft design.
Please post feedback on your blog, Medium, GitHub Gists, mailing lists, Google Docs, etc. And then please link it here.
Please help categorize the rest of the uncategorized proposals at the bottom.
Update, June 19, 2019 – Based on this feedback we have posted a proposal for a try builtin, which produced significant feedback on #32437 (threaded view here).
We've disabled comments on that issue until July 1 to give people time to experiment in their own code. We would very much like to see experience reports about using the general try approach in your own code, including trial conversions with tryhard. Thanks!
Add to this list:
Discussions of the requirements for a new error handling method.
Warren Stephens, “Go 2 handle should provide line number, source filename, version”, December 2018
Liam Breck, “Requirements to Consider for Go 2 Error Handling”, September 2018
jimmyfrasche, “Don't special case error or nil”, September 2018
Matt Dee “Error Handling Should Support Custom Error Types”, August 2018
Ian Lance Taylor, “Incomplete list of criteria” from GitHub proposal discussion, May 2018
Rob Pike (posted by @matjam) “Simplicity is Complicated”, December 2015
This includes supporting the existing chaining/stacking of handlers without changes.
Tokyo Gophers, “In support comments from Go 2 feedback event”, October 2018
Adam Bouhenguel “In support of more declarative error handling”, August 2018
Daniel Theophanes, “Go 2 Design: Error Handling Net Win”, August 2018
Alexandru-Paul Copil, “In Support, with slight modifications and considerations”, September 2021
Code changed to use the existing proposal.
Daniel Milde, “Use check-handle draft syntax in gdu”, May 2021
Mateusz Czapliński, “Converting a fragment of real code with error handling to Go 2 ‘design draft’”, August 2018
Blake Mizerany, “How best to account for partial writes when using check/handle?”, August 2018
Critiques without counter-proposals
Pasha Osipyants, “Error handling mechanism using current go possibilities”, February 2019
Anonymous, “Go 2 Error Handling Non-Proposal”, October 2018
Stripe developers, “Feedback on Go 2 draft designs”, October 2018
Tokyo Gophers, “Against comments from Go 2 feedback event”, Oct 2018
Liam Breck, “Golang, How dare you handle my checks!”, September 2018
Nate Finch, “Handle and Check, Let's Not”, September 2018
Jozef Slezak, “Use semicolons instead of new keywords: check+handle”, September 2018
Shannon Wynter “Error Handling as it can already be done”, August 2018
Concepts that appear repeatedly among the suggestions below.
Invoke handler via assignment, e.g. v, ? := f()
references: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Invoke one of several handlers by name, e.g. v := check f() ? name
references: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Leidong Liu, “a, b, !checkError := Sub(...)”, Nov 2019
Jin Feng, “[A simplified Go 2 error handling solution with no handler], (https://gist.github.com/jfeng45/416d4ecb42a4df50bebf86ce1c41c668)”, July 2019
Dave Arnold, “Move special check keyword to left-hand side of assignment”, April 2019
Rockmen, “Add handle and ? as syntax sugar maybe”, December 2018
Steve Manuel, “Go 2 handle statement to optionally use a type switch”, October 2018
Zlatko Bratkovic, “In support with tiny change”, October 2018
DeedleFake, “Possible Solution to check Awkwardness with Chained Method Calls”, September 2018
Yesuu Zhang, “Pass the check and handle parameters, custom handle”, September 2018
Viktor Kojouharov, “Reducing the special casing around the new error design draft”, September 2018
Aleksei Pavliukov, “Use a function as a handle parameter”, September 2018
Savino Pio Liguori, “Feedback for Go2 error handling design”, August 2018
Jeffrey Koehler, “In support of Handle Chaining; On Check”, August 2018
Garrus, “Another style of syntactic sugar on error handling”, August 2018
Paul Borman, “Arguments against the Go 2 error handling proposal”, August 2018
krhubert, “Error default handler for tests”, May 2019
Franz, Implement error handling like an invariant check of a variable. when the value changes, a function is called. this can then be used in other situations too.
Brandon Heenan, “Concise, with more obvious control flow”, May 2021
Markus Heukelom, “proposal: Improve error handing using guard and must keywords”, April 2019
Alessandro Arzilli, “Against check as an operator and handler chains”, August 2018
Simon Howard, “Go 2 errors response: One Handler Per Function”, August 2018
Eli Bendersky, “Thoughts on the Go 2 Error Handling proposal”, September 2018
Yoshiki Shibukawa, “Every handles should have return statement”, September 2018
Azamat Kalberdiev, “Handling every error with intuitive code”, March 2021
Andrew Phillips, “Use closures rather than handlers”, October 2018
Taihei Morikuni, “Use functions as an error handler, Add syntactic sugar to remove duplicated if statement”, September 2018
Scott Pakin, “Go 2 error handling based on non-local returns”, September 2018
Greg Weber “Error handling with functions and an error return?”, September 2018. Originally linked gist.
Gigi Sayfan, “Go 2 error handling feedback + alternative solution", September 2018
Ruan Kunliang, “Simple Error Handling for Go 2”, August 2018
Martin Rode, “The return of the return, Error Handling for Go 2”, November 2018
Joe Lapp, “Local-only throw-catch error handling”, October 2021
Danijel Premus, “Use existing go labels”, December 2018
Burak Serdar, “Handler for err declares both err and errHandler, less intrusive labeled error handling”, October 2018
John Forstmeier, “Labeled error handling”, September 2018
Mikaël Cluseau, “Multiple handlers, unambiguous on which return value is used”, September 2018
Kiura Magomadov, “Addition to Go2 draft error handling", September 2018
Liam Breck, “The #id/catch Error Model”, September 2018
Marlon Che, “How about separating check and handle?”, August 2018
Patrick Kelly, “handling more than just errors in go”, August 2018
Vlad Didenko, “Error Handling with grab | name()”, November 2017
Gooid, “Inline style error handle(simple unambiguous)”, August 2018
Victoria Raymond, “Force ‘check’ to return error instead of allowing customized logic”, August 2018
Night-walker and daokoder, “Extend and repurpose defer instead of introducing new syntax”, June 2014
Mathieu Devos, “Go2 Error Handling Proposal: Scoped Check/Handle”, August 2018
Rust RFC, “Trait-Based Exception Handling (wherein catch is akin to try)”, February 2016
ZhiFeng Hu, “[Go2ErrorHandling] Go should support Exception handler”, August 2018
Jan Semmelink, “if-else-undo-done”, August 2018
Vladimir Utoplov, “Handling throws/throw idiom”, September 2018
Gokan EKINCI, “try-with-resources”, December 2018
Alex Hornbake, “refuse. conditional return keyword”, June 2019
yaxinlx, “Use ? as suffix to remove the last error value from multi-value tuples”, March 2019
Plamen Stoev, “Go 2 block-level checks”, November 2018
Peter Goetz, “Formalize and Enforce Error Handling”, September 2017
Fedir RYKHTIK, “Go 2 error handling with exclamation mark”, September 2018
Einthusan Vigneswaran, “Error Aware Keywords - return, defer, if, != and forcing the error object to be the last argument”, September 2018
Andrew Phillips, “Improving Go Error Handling”, October 2017
Please help categorize the rest of the proposals here.
Joe Lapp, “on...return for error handling”, Oct 2021
Andrew Gwozdziewycz, “Check for Go Errors”, June 2019
DeedleFake, “Feedback for Go 2 Design Drafts”, August 2018
Loki Verloren, “Go 2 error handling feedback and my thoughts on how to improve programmer's efficiency and experience”, September 2018
Gima, “Procedural code, separate error handling”, June 2018
Konstantin, “error handling for error-tree”, Discussion May 2019
Please format all entries as below.
To make it easier to see new feedback, please add your new proposal to the top of the section it is placed in.