⎕SIGNAL/

[Phil Last]

While writing code intended to be used as far back as Dyalog v14.0 I recently got hit with an error that I'd managed to avoid for the best part of twenty years because Dyalog introduced another way to avoid it.

v16.0 introduced a shy result to

      [msg] ⎕SIGNAL ⍬

that previously had none. Prior to that it was thought to be necessary to place all instances of ⎕SIGNAL within dfns behind guards to avoid the consequences of their not having results when they weren't tiggered.

Since the introducton of the result I've used it a few times in v16.0 forgetting that I had a solution all along that would have worked in v9.0 had I thought of it back then; it actually took me 'til about v11.0 or v12.0.

      z←⎕signal/ b ↓ m n

where m is the error message, n is the error number and b is a boolean scalar indicating no error.

If b is true m is dropped, the argument to ⎕SIGNAL/ is singleton n and reduction runs its operand exactly zero times on such an argument, returning it unchanged, so the dfn can continue.

If false, reduction inserts ⎕SIGNAL between m and n and signals as expected.

[gil]

Neat! I'll try to remember that.