Error function not working as intended about just

[pport8]

Ok, I've just seen this part of the documentation and it seems the defined behaviour.

If find it quite strange because "Call to function `error` failed" somewhat implies that calling the error() function itself was the error, not that the intention was to throw it because of "message".

Do you agree? I may be not looking at this with the right pair of glasses...

[casey]

The issue here is that just interpolations are evaluated before recipes are run, so error runs and fails, which prevents the recipe from running.

Can you use the shell exit command, like so:

test TEST:
	if test ! -f ansible/host_vars/{{ TEST }}.yaml; then echo host_var file doesnt exist; exit 1; fi

[pport8]

Hey! Thank u for your rapid response!

I'm not aware of the internals of your project so please take this with a gigantic grain of salt.

If error() is a function to manage bad behaviours, like an exception, should it fail? I think a better flow will be for the error function to stop the execution in a controlled manner rather than letting it fail and become an error on itself. I found it misleading; but then again, I'm not experienced with your project and its internals, even less with rust.

Using the built-in shell exit command is actually a solution, but then I see no point to have an error() function in the first place.

If you don't agree and think the current behaviour is correct, feel free to close this ticket.

Another time: thank u for your attention and keep going with this fantastic project : ).

[casey]

For sure!

I agree it's a bit confusing. I think the primary use of the error function is to serve as the else branch of an if statement:

foo := if bar != "" {
  bar + "hello"
} else {
  error("bar isn't set")
}

In this case, you want to error if bar is the empty string, because there's no default value for foo. It's not super useful inside of recipes.