Just Abort It

Posted: August 24th, 2009 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: Ruby | View Comments

A lot of people end up writing Ruby methods that looks something like this:

def stop_error(message)
  puts "ERROR: #{message}"
  exit(1)
end

Which they call in their app like so:

stop_error "Oh noes, file doesn't exist!" unless File.exist?(file)

I used to write that method a lot too. Did you know Ruby has a built-in method that provides just what we’re all looking for?

Kernel::abort

So, stop writing your own little method and just abort it:

abort "Oh noes, file doesn't exist!" unless File.exist?(file)

1 Pierre Riteau said at 11:59 am on August 24th, 2009:
And of course abort follows conventions by writing the error message on STDERR, so that's one less thing to think about.
2 sant0sk1 said at 2:51 pm on August 24th, 2009:
Good point, another benefit!
3 Pierre Riteau said at 6:59 pm on August 24th, 2009:
And of course abort follows conventions by writing the error message on STDERR, so that's one less thing to think about.
4 Jerod Santo said at 9:51 pm on August 24th, 2009:
Good point, another benefit!

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