# flake8-errmsg
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## Intro
A checker for flake8 that helps format nice error messages. Currently there are
two checks:
- **EM101**: Check for raw usage of a string literal in Exception raising.
- **EM102**: Check for raw usage of an f-string literal in Exception raising.
- **EM103**: Check for raw usage of `.format` on a string literal in Exception
raising.
The issue is that Python includes the line with the raise in the default
traceback (and most other formatters, like Rich and IPython to too). That means
a user gets a message like this:
```python
sub = "Some value"
raise RuntimeError(f"{sub!r} is incorrect")
```
```pytb
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "tmp.py", line 2, in <module>
raise RuntimeError(f"{sub!r} is incorrect")
RuntimeError: 'Some value' is incorrect
```
If this is longer or more complex, the duplication can be quite confusing for a
user unaccustomed to reading tracebacks.
While if you always assign to something like `msg`, then you get:
```python
sub = "Some value"
msg = f"{sub!r} is incorrect"
raise RunetimeError(msg)
```
```pytb
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "tmp.py", line 3, in <module>
raise RuntimeError(msg)
RuntimeError: 'Some value' is incorrect
```
Now there's a simpler traceback, less code, and no double message. If you have a
long message, this also often formats better when using Black, too.
Reminder: Libraries should produce tracebacks with custom error classes, and
applications should print nice errors, usually _without_ a traceback, unless
something _unexpected_ occurred. An app should not print a traceback for an
error that is known to be triggerable by a user.
## Options
There is one option, `--errmsg-max-string-length`, which defaults to 0 but can
be set to a larger value. The check will ignore string literals shorter than
this length. This option is supported in configuration mode as well. This will
only affect string literals and not f-strings. This option is also supported
when running directly, without flake8.
## Usage
Just add this to your `.pre-commit-config.yaml` `flake8` check under
`additional_dependencies`. If you use `extend-select`, you should need no other
config.
You can also manually run this check (without flake8's `noqa` filtering) via
script entry-point (`pipx run flake8-errmsg <files>`) or module entry-point
(`python -m flake8_errmsg <files>` when installed).
## FAQ
Q: Why Python 3.10+ only? <br/> A: This is a static checker and for developers.
Developers and static checks should be on 3.10 already. And I was lazy and match
statements are fantastic for this sort of thing. And the AST module changed in
3.8 anyway.
Q: What other sorts of checks are acceptable? <br/> A: Things that help with
nice errors. For example, maybe requiring `raise SystemExit(n)` over `sys.exit`,
`exit`, etc. Possibly adding a check for `warnings.warn` without setting
`stacklevel` to something (usually 2).
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