List every error code a function can give out!

[Tekie]

Add a list with every error code a function can give out to the context help and/or the main help window of each function. The error-code tables included in the help file are very general at the moments. But even a table just for the File I/O error codes would not help much, because the different file I/O functions usually do not output the same error codes.

1. This would greatly help to replace certain error codes by user-specific error messages.

2. By knowing exactly which error can occur, you can handle each error code in the appropriate way, to make your SubVI etc. much more robust.

(This picture is just an example with randomly chosen numbers for the error codes to display, what i am talking about.)

[AristosQueue (NI)]

My Google skills have failed me. Can anyone find the post I wrote sometime last year about why this is impossible to do and link it here? I'm pretty sure I wrote up why this is problematic for API documentation in any programming language in epic detail either on ni.com or lavag.org, but I cannot find it and I don't want to type it again.

I know... it sounds like a cop out to say this is impossible to do, but it's true -- even Microsoft, with its batallion of tech writers, abandoned trying to document this for APIs. I wish I had the post that explained why.

[Norbert_B]

While i find the idea really, really appealing, it is simply not doable.

As AQ states (sorry, haven't found the link as well), it is an effort a company cannot fullfill. You had to increase the number of employees for documation by huge numbers because

- what is happening when changes are done to the modules?

- how is the developer responsable for error codes if including third party code (e.g. DLLs)?

- does every developer pass on the list of error codes his code generate to the documentation team including descriptive text?

This would make the software VERY expensive if done. Therefore i don't see a chance for this....

Norbert

[JÞB]

@Norbert