One of the worst things you can do is to throw or return a string instead of an error. However, why is that? Let's describe a few features that the error objects have:
All of these functionalities are gone in an instant when you use strings instead of errors. However, let's take a look at a practical example:
// err-vs-string.js
var fs = require('fs');
function getWordCount(filename, callback) {
fs.readFile(filename, 'utf-8', function(err, content) {
if (err) { return callback(err); }
return callback(null, content.split(' ').length);
});
}
getWordCount('/i-dont-exist', function(err, length) {
if (err) {
if (err.code === 'ENOENT') {
return console.error('File not found!');
}
throw...