Usually, when an error is to be signalled, [error] command is to do the
job.  However, what it ''prints'' to standard error when used in scripts
doesn't conform to [Unix] conventions, which require an error message to
be preceded by the program name and a colon, e. g.:

 foo: unrecognized option `--bar'

 bar: file: No such file or directory

Here is suggested a simple '''gnuerr''' command to ''print'' error
messages, similar to the [GNU] C Library '''error''' function.  Of
course, it's only useful in applications which aren't interactive (or
which support non-interactive mode at least.)  That is, in [CLI]
applications.

   Variable:   program-short-name

This variable holds the tail element of the program path, [argv0],
i. e.:

 file tail $::argv0

It's put before the error message itself by the following procedures.

   Procedure:   gnuerr ?'''-exit''' ''returnCode''? ''formatString'' ?''arg'' ''arg'' ''...''?

Prints an error message to [stderr].  The message consists of the
program name, followed by a colon, a space, and the result of applying
[format] to the ''formatString'' and the remaining arguments.  If the
message to be printed contains embedded newlines, each line of the
message will be prepended by the program name on output.

If the ''returnCode'' is given and non-zero, the procedure pass it to
[exit] after the message is printed.

'''TODO''' List:

   * parse [errorCode] (if requested) and print POSIX error message after the message printed;
   * something like '''error_at_line''' could be useful as well.

 ### gnuerr.tcl  -*- Tcl -*-
 ## The following code is in public domain.
 
 ### Code:
 
 namespace eval ::gnuerr {
     variable program-short-name \
         [ expr { [ info exists  ::argv0 ]
                  ? [ file tail $::argv0 ]
                  : "" } ]
     namespace export gnuerr
 }
 
 proc ::gnuerr::prefix-lines { prefix text } {
     set result ""
     ## .
     append result \
        $prefix [ string map [ list "\n" "\n${prefix}" ] $text ]
 }
 
 proc ::gnuerr::msg { formatString args } {
     variable program-short-name
     set s [ uplevel \#0 [ list ::format $formatString ] $args ]
     puts stderr [ prefix-lines "${program-short-name}: " $s ]
 }
 
 proc ::gnuerr::gnuerr { args } {
     if { [ llength $args ] < 1 } {
         error [ format "wrong # args: should be \"gnuerr %s\"" \
                     "?-exit returnCode? formatString ?arg arg ...?" ]
     } elseif { ! [ string equal "-exit" [ lindex $args 0 ] ] } {
         set exit 0
     } elseif { [ llength $args ] < 2 } {
         error "expected argument after \"-exit\""
     } elseif { [ set exit [ lindex $args 1 ]
                  catch { incr exit 0 } ] } {
         error "expected integer but got \"$exit\""
     } else {
         set args [ lrange $args 2 end ]
     }
     eval msg $args
     ## .
     if { $exit } {
         exit $exit
     }
 }
 
 package provide gnuerr 0.1
 
 ### gnuerr.tcl ends here

----

[Category Package]