How is try catch evaluated in matlab? - matlab

I wonder how a try-catch block is evaluated in matlab. In particular, is the try-catch block evaluated in runtime or "compile time"?
Also, is a try-catch block expensive?
If someone have a link to any documentation that would be much appreciated.
(Btw, I know that try-catch is not the best solution in most cases. Still I would like to know how it works, since I have used it in some code).

try and catch blocks allow you to override the default error behavior
for a set of program statements. If any statement in a try block
generates an error, program control goes immediately to the catch
block, which contains your error handling statements.
To learn more about try and catch in Matlab:Try and Catch
Try and catch block is always executed in run-time and is used to catch the errors that occur and has error-handling statements. So if your code generates some error and you want to handle it, use it. Using error-handling is good programming practice..

Related

Can a matlab function called within a script cause the script to break?

I am running a script which calls a function, and if a certain condition is met, inside the function, I want the whole thing just to terminate (and by that I do not mean I want to close matlab using exit). Is that possible? I know I can use return or break to return to the script, however I want the script to stop as well if this condition is met.
The only function I know of that does this is error. This throws an exception, and, if no exception handlers with try and catch are installed in the calling script, will terminate and return to command prompt. Which is what you want, as far as I understand. It prints an error message though. This could be suppressed if you guard all code in the top-level script with a try catch handler. However this will have to be specific to the one error and it makes debugging ("stop-on-error") much more difficult.
The thing is that the only use case I see for this behavior (termination of whole program on certain event) is when a non recoverable error occurs, and in that case printing an error message is indeed appropriate.
In case the script is successful termination of the whole program is not really the right way. All functions should return to give the upper layers of the code to perform some clean-up action, like saving the output data or so.

matlab can't catch error in subfunction

I'm trying to implement a bug reporting system in my code so I put a try/catch around the function that is run to start the program. It's a programmatic GUI so most of the subfunctions are callbacks for buttons or other GUI elements. However whenever an error is thrown in these subfunctions, it is not caught. Some of the subfunctions are defined in other files as they are other programmatic GUI files.
My question is, is there anyway to catch errors that are more than one function level deep?
Example below:
I run CeleST to start the program
function CeleST
try
% Global try-catch
CSTMainWindow()
catch exception
generateReport(exception) % bugReporter
end
CSTMainWindow is a programattic GUI file and here is one of the pushbuttons:
uicontrol('parent',mainPanel,'style','pushbutton','string','1. Process videos...','position',[500 yFilters+hFilters+10 170 60],'callback',#processVideo);
However errors in processVideo are not caught
processVideo:
function processVideo(hObject,eventdata) %#ok<INUSD>
set(mainFigure,'Visible','off');
CSTProcessVideos % Programmatic GUI File for another window
set(mainFigure,'Visible','on');
flagConsistentButton = false;
checkSequences
populateFilters
end
Even putting undefined variables in the subfunctions throws errors but they're not caught by my try/catch. Any suggestions or am I doing something wrong? Do I really have to put try-catch blocks around everything?
GTSMainWindow is not calling processVideo. Instead the function is used as a callback and called later.
Basically every callback function must care for it's own errors, put the try catch into the processVideo function and it will catch the error.

Errordlg for any given Matlab error

I have a question about inner Matlab error management. Right now I have quite a large program with a lot of variables and functions that cumulated over my code writting and I'm 100 percent sure that I did not catch all the bugs and mistakes in the program and I don't want it to crash completely when is used by layman user. So, is there a way to display errordlg message and for example restart the program when there will be any given error directly by Matlab (for example when I forgot to declare a global variable etc.)?
Thanks for answers, Peter
Crashes are good, because they force users to report bugs.
If you don't want to go that route, Matlab provides try-catch: wrap your code in a try-catch block. If there is an error, you'll find yourself in the catch block where you can have Matlab send you an email with the error message, and restart the program if necessary.
You can use try/catch statements to respond to errors in your program. There's more information here.

Is `finally` block executed in case there is `return` inside a `try` or a `catch` block?

Using a try-catch-finally construction to retrieve a database record, it seems that I need to return a value inside a try block in case everything was fine (as in case of an exception the end of the function is not meant to be reached). But If I return inside try, is finally code going to be reached (to close the connection etc.)?
Yes,
The result of the try/catch expression will be the last line of either the try or catch block, but the finally block will always execute no matter what
Yes.
The point of a finally is to ensure that some cleanup code is executed no matter what path the code uses to leave the try block. It happens on ordinary return, when an exception is thrown and caught, and when an exception is thrown that isn't caught by this try block. The only thing that will prevent it running is if the program is unable to leave the try block at all; an infinite loop inside it, or the process being killed by some means that prevents this normal processing from happening, or something of that order. I'm pretty sure even if you exit the process from inside the try block that the finally block will be executed before the process actually dies.

Idea for doing almost same work in both catch & finally(C#3.0)

I have a requirement.
I am processing some files and after the processing are done I am archiving those files into an archive folder with timestamp appended.
The file archiving and putting time stamp portion I am doing in the Finally block. Now a new requirement has come where I need to mail if something wrong goes in the original files and then I need to archive the same. Now this piece of code I need to handle in the catch block.
But if I write the code entirely in the catch block, then it will fire only if there is an exception; otherwise not.
So basically I am writing the same pice of code in both the catch and finally block.
What is the standard and recommended approach you people think will be better in this case?
I am using C#3.0
Thanks.
A finally block is really for code that "always" has to run, even after an exception. This typically means cleanup type code. It's a "code smell" to see processing type code in a finally block.
Maybe you can post your code, and we can suggest a better way for you.