Return QMessageBox::Icon instead of bool to check if method worked fine

Please_Help_me_D

Hi,

My question is about preventing errors that users can make.
Usually we write:

QDir dir("example");
if (!dir.exists()) {
    QMessageBox::critical(nullptr, "Error", "Cannot find the example directory");
    return false;
}

But is it ok to return QMessageBox::Icon like in the following code? Or maybe nobody does like this and this is bad form?

QDir dir("example");
if (!dir.exists()) {
    QMessageBox::critical(nullptr, "Error", "Cannot find the example directory");
    return QMessageBox::Icon::Critical;
}

mrjj

@Please_Help_me_D
Hi
Why not defines your own enum and return one of these to tell the caller what happened.
So it matches what you are really doing.

enum FileSelectStatus{ ExampleDirNotFound , DirIsEmpty, InvalidX, AllOK };

Or what else can go wrong.

JonB

@Please_Help_me_D said in Return QMessageBox::Icon instead of bool to check if method worked fine:

But is it ok to return QMessageBox::Icon like in the following code?

It's a free world (just). Yes, you can do that. Depends on the function's return type.

Or maybe nobody does like this and this is bad form?

It would be a very odd choice for function return type; bool false would be usual. Why would you want to return this?

Please_Help_me_D

@JonB thank you for commenting
I'm in doubt, I don't know exactly what I want.
bool has two states and QMessageBox::Icon has few of them. Probably in future I will process not only QMessageBox::Icon::Critical but also QMessageBox::Icon::Warning I don't know
But I feel it is a strange output...

I don't have enough experience to cath errors so I'm experimenting

mrjj

@Please_Help_me_D
Hi
Why not defines your own enum and return one of these to tell the caller what happened.
So it matches what you are really doing.

enum FileSelectStatus{ ExampleDirNotFound , DirIsEmpty, InvalidX, AllOK };

Or what else can go wrong.

Please_Help_me_D

@mrjj thank you
Maybe I will create something like QMessageBox (or inherit from it) with the opportunity to retrieve enum from appeared window (warning or critical or something else)

mrjj

@Please_Help_me_D
Hi
It would be easier just to put in a function that returns your enum and then use that instead of
QMessageBox directly.