I was curious what types of error trapping routines everyone uses. Trapping errors properly can be incredibly useful not only in developing your apps, but in maintaining them once they are in the field.

For example, the e-trapping in my apps captures all relevant info about the error, message, module, line number and even environment settings and adds it to an error table. While developing this is a great tool for determining where and how your programs are misbehaving without having to write down the errors as they are happening. You can test all facets of your app and then look at the errors (and you know there will be some) en masse. This will save both time and effort.

In addition, this type of e-trapping will allow you to better maintain your app in the field. I'm sure we've all had a client call us up and tell us that our supposedly bullet-proof app suddenly grew horns and begain spewing profanity at them. Normally, we could only scratch our heads and inquire as to the type of medication the client is on, but with the proper e-trapping we can just open up our error table and find out what, when and exactly how the error occured.