Today in our continued journey through our Ruby Exception Handling series we'll be taking a closer look at the ZeroDivionError. As you may suspect the ZeroDivisionError occurs when attempting to divide a number by zero.
In this article we'll briefly explore the ZeroDivisionError in more detail, including where it sits within the Ruby Exception class hierarchy and showing a few simple code examples to illustrate how ZeroDivisionErrors occur in the first place. Let's get started!
The Technical Rundown
- All Ruby exceptions are descendants of the
Exceptionclass, or a subclass therein. StandardErroris a direct descendant of theExceptionclass, and is also a superclass with many descendants of its own.ZeroDivisionErroris the direct descendant ofStandardError.
When Should You Use It?
Producing a ZeroDivisionError is quite simple, but there are a few small quirks that you'll want to be aware of before assuming your rescue ZeroDivisionError => e statement will always catch attempts to divide by zero-ish values. To illustrate we have a few example methods showing normal division, division by exactly zero, division by floating zero, and division by negative floating zero. As usual we'll start with the full code snippet and then we'll briefly go through it to see what's going on:
def execute_examples
division_example
Logging.line_separator
zero_division_example
Logging.line_separator
floating_zero_division_example
Logging.line_separator
negative_floating_zero_division_example
enddef division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator.
denominator = 5
# Divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> 3
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
enddef zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to zero.
denominator = 0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> (EXPLICIT) ZeroDivisionError: divided by 0
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
enddef floating_zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to zero as float.
denominator = 0.0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> Infinity
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
enddef negative_floating_zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to negative zero as float.
denominator = -0.0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> -Infinity
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
end# Execute examples.
execute_examplesmodule Logging
extend Utilityclass << self
# Outputs +value+ to console.
# +args+ may include:
# +:explicit+ (Boolean) - Is +Exception+ class +value+ expected? [default: true]
# +:timestamp+ (Boolean) - Should timestamp be included? [default: false]
#
# Examples:
#
# Logging.log('My message') #=> "My message"
# Logging.log('My message', { timestamp: true} ) #=> "[12:00:05] My message"
#
# begin
# raise Exception.new('An exception!')
# rescue Exception => e
# Logging.log(e)
# end
# #=> (EXPLICIT) Exception: An exception!
# #=> (...backtrace...)
def log(value, args = {})
# Check if exception was explicit.
explicit = args[:explicit].nil? ? true : args[:explicit]
# Get timestamp if necessary.
timestamp = args[:timestamp] ? formatted_timestamp : ""if value.is_a?(Exception)
# If +value+ is an +Exception+ type output formatted exception.
puts timestamp << formatted_exception(value, explicit)
elsif value.is_a?(String)
# If +value+ is a +String+ directly output
puts timestamp << value
else
# If +value+ is anything else output.
puts timestamp if !timestamp.empty?
puts value
end
end# Output the specified +separator+ +count+ times to log.
# +args may include:
# +:count+ (Integer) - Number of characters to output. [default: 20]
# +:separator+ (String) - Character or string to duplicate and output. [default: '-']
def line_separator(args = {})
count = args[:count].nil? ? 20 : args[:count]
separator = args[:separator].nil? ? '-' : args[:separator]# Concatenate and output.
puts separator * count
endprivate
def formatted_exception(exception, explicit)
# Set explicit or inexplicit tag.
output = "(#{explicit ? 'EXPLICIT' : 'INEXPLICIT'}) "
# Add class and message.
output << "#{exception.class}: #{exception.message}\n"
# Append backtrace with leading tabs.
output << "\t" << exception.backtrace.join("\n\t")
# Return output string.
output
end
def formatted_timestamp
"[#{Time.now.strftime("%T")}] "
end
end
end
We start with a normal and functional #division_example method:
def division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator.
denominator = 5
# Divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> 3
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
end
This works as expected and outputs a result of 3. However, if we change our denominator to 0 we'll produce a ZeroDivisionError, as seen in #zero_division_example:
def zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to zero.
denominator = 0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> (EXPLICIT) ZeroDivisionError: divided by 0
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
end
That should make sense to most of us I think: Just like when you were bored in school and were messing around with your calculator and tried dividing by zero you'd get an error, the same applies in Ruby (and probably all other programming languages for that matter). However, dividing by zero in all cases may not work exactly as you'd think. Watch what happens when we change our denominator from 0 to a floating point representation of 0.0:
def floating_zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to zero as float.
denominator = 0.0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> Infinity
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
end
Suddenly we no longer produce a ZeroDivisionError but, instead, we get an output of Infinity. This is because Ruby handles various numeric data object types differently: whole numbers or Integers like 0 are calculated differently than Floats like 0.0.
We can see this strangeness continue if we change the denominator from 0.0 to the negative version of -0.0, which produces an output of negative Infinity:
def negative_floating_zero_division_example
begin
# Set the numerator.
numerator = 15
# Set the denominator to negative zero as float.
denominator = -0.0
# Try to divide and output the result.
Logging.log(numerator / denominator)
#=> -Infinity
rescue ZeroDivisionError => e
Logging.log(e)
rescue => e
Logging.log(e, { explicit: false })
end
end
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