14.3 Classifying failure

A Libmarpa application programming failure, unless stated otherwise, is an irrecoverable failure. Once an irrecoverable failure has occurred, the further behavior of the program is undefined. Nonetheless, we specify, and Libmarpa attempts, diagnostics behaviors (see Application and diagnostic behavior) in an effort to handle irrecoverable failures as smoothly as possible.

A Libmarpa application programming failure is not recoverable, unless this document states otherwise.

A failure is called a hard failure if it has an error code associated with it. A recoverable failure is called a soft failure if it has no associated error code. (For more on error codes, see Error codes.)

All failures fall into one of five types. In order of severity, these are

• memory allocation failures,
• undetected failures,
• irrecoverable hard failures,
• partially recoverable hard failures,
• fully recoverable hard failures, and
• soft failures.