How should I use FormatMessage() properly in C++?

Question

Without:

• MFC
• ATL

How can I use FormatMessage() to get the error text for a HRESULT?

 HRESULT hresult = application.CreateInstance("Excel.Application");

 if (FAILED(hresult))
 {
     // what should i put here to obtain a human-readable
     // description of the error?
     exit (hresult);
 }

Answer 1

Here's the proper way to get an error message back from the system for an HRESULT (named hresult in this case, or you can replace it with GetLastError()):

LPTSTR errorText = NULL;

FormatMessage(
   // use system message tables to retrieve error text
   FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM
   // allocate buffer on local heap for error text
   |FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER
   // Important! will fail otherwise, since we're not 
   // (and CANNOT) pass insertion parameters
   |FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS,  
   NULL,    // unused with FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM
   hresult,
   MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT),
   (LPTSTR)&errorText,  // output 
   0, // minimum size for output buffer
   NULL);   // arguments - see note 
   
if ( NULL != errorText )
{
   // ... do something with the string `errorText` - log it, display it to the user, etc.

   // release memory allocated by FormatMessage()
   LocalFree(errorText);
   errorText = NULL;
}

The key difference between this and David Hanak's answer is the use of the FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS flag. MSDN is a bit unclear on how insertions should be used, but Raymond Chen notes that you should never use them when retrieving a system message, as you've no way of knowing which insertions the system expects.

FWIW, if you're using Visual C++ you can make your life a bit easier by using the _com_error class:

{
   _com_error error(hresult);
   LPCTSTR errorText = error.ErrorMessage();
   
   // do something with the error...

   //automatic cleanup when error goes out of scope
}

Not part of MFC or ATL directly as far as I'm aware.

Answer 2

Keep in mind that you cannot do the following:

{
   LPCTSTR errorText = _com_error(hresult).ErrorMessage();

   // do something with the error...

   //automatic cleanup when error goes out of scope
}

As the class is created and destroyed on the stack leaving errorText to point to an invalid location. In most cases this location will still contain the error string, but that likelihood falls away fast when writing threaded applications.

So always do it as follows as answered by Shog9 above:

{
   _com_error error(hresult);
   LPCTSTR errorText = error.ErrorMessage();

   // do something with the error...

   //automatic cleanup when error goes out of scope
}

Answer 3

Try this:

void PrintLastError (const char *msg /* = "Error occurred" */) {
        DWORD errCode = GetLastError();
        char *err;
        if (!FormatMessage(FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM,
                           NULL,
                           errCode,
                           MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT), // default language
                           (LPTSTR) &err,
                           0,
                           NULL))
            return;

        static char buffer[1024];
        _snprintf(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "ERROR: %s: %s\n", msg, err);
        OutputDebugString(buffer); // or otherwise log it
        LocalFree(err);
}

Answer 4

Since c++11, you can use the standard library instead of FormatMessage:

#include <system_error>

std::string message = std::system_category().message(hr)

Answer 5

This is more an addition to the majority of the answers, but instead of using LocalFree(errorText) use the HeapFree function:

::HeapFree(::GetProcessHeap(), NULL, errorText);

From the MSDN site:

Windows 10:
LocalFree is not in the modern SDK, so it cannot be used to free the result buffer. Instead, use HeapFree (GetProcessHeap(), allocatedMessage). In this case, this is the same as calling LocalFree on memory.

Update
I found that LocalFree is in version 10.0.10240.0 of the SDK (line 1108 in WinBase.h). However, the warning still exists in the link above.

#pragma region Desktop Family or OneCore Family
#if WINAPI_FAMILY_PARTITION(WINAPI_PARTITION_DESKTOP | WINAPI_PARTITION_SYSTEM)

WINBASEAPI
_Success_(return==0)
_Ret_maybenull_
HLOCAL
WINAPI
LocalFree(
    _Frees_ptr_opt_ HLOCAL hMem
    );

#endif /* WINAPI_FAMILY_PARTITION(WINAPI_PARTITION_DESKTOP | WINAPI_PARTITION_SYSTEM) */
#pragma endregion

Update 2
I would also suggest using the FORMAT_MESSAGE_MAX_WIDTH_MASK flag to tidy up line breaks in system messages.

From the MSDN site:

FORMAT_MESSAGE_MAX_WIDTH_MASK
The function ignores regular line breaks in the message definition text. The function stores hard-coded line breaks in the message definition text into the output buffer. The function generates no new line breaks.

Update 3
There appears to be 2 particular system error codes that do not return the full message using the recommended approach:

Why does FormatMessage only create partial messages for ERROR_SYSTEM_PROCESS_TERMINATED and ERROR_UNHANDLED_EXCEPTION system errors?

Answer 6

Here is a version of David's function that handles Unicode

void HandleLastError(const TCHAR *msg /* = "Error occured" */) {
    DWORD errCode = GetLastError();
    TCHAR *err;
    if (!FormatMessage(FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM,
                       NULL,
                       errCode,
                       MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT), // default language
                       (LPTSTR) &err,
                       0,
                       NULL))
        return;

    //TRACE("ERROR: %s: %s", msg, err);
    TCHAR buffer[1024];
    _sntprintf_s(buffer, sizeof(buffer) / sizeof(buffer[0]), _T("ERROR: %s: %s\n"), msg, err);
    OutputDebugString(buffer);
    LocalFree(err);
}

Answer 7

As pointed out in other answers:

• FormatMessage takes a DWORD result not a HRESULT (typically GetLastError()).
• LocalFree is needed to release memory that was allocated by FormatMessage

I took the above points and added a few more for my answer:

• Wrap the FormatMessage in a class to allocate and release memory as needed
• Use operator overload (e.g. operator LPTSTR() const { return ...; } so that your class can be used as a string

class CFormatMessage
{
public:
    CFormatMessage(DWORD dwMessageId,
                   DWORD dwLanguageId = MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT)) :
        m_text(NULL)
    {
        Assign(dwMessageId, dwLanguageId);
    }

    ~CFormatMessage()
    {
        Clear();
    }

    void Clear()
    {
        if (m_text)
        {
            LocalFree(m_text);
            m_text = NULL;
        }
    }

    void Assign(DWORD dwMessageId,
                DWORD dwLanguageId = MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT))
    {
        Clear();
        DWORD dwFlags = FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM
            | FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER
            | FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS,
        FormatMessage(
            dwFlags,
            NULL,
            dwMessageId,
            dwLanguageId,
            (LPTSTR) &m_text,
            0,
            NULL);
    }

    LPTSTR text() const { return m_text; }
    operator LPTSTR() const { return text(); }

protected:
    LPTSTR m_text;

};

Find a more complete version of the above code here: https://github.com/stephenquan/FormatMessage

With the above class, the usage is simply:

    std::wcout << (LPTSTR) CFormatMessage(GetLastError()) << L"\n";

Answer 8

The code below is code is the C++ equivalent I've written out in contrast to Microsoft's ErrorExit() but slightly altered to avoid all macros and use unicode. The idea here is to avoid unnecessary casts and mallocs. I couldn't escape all of the C casts but this is the best I could muster. Pertaining to FormatMessageW(), which requires a pointer to be allocated by the format function and the Error Id from the GetLastError(). The pointer after static_cast can be used like a normal wchar_t pointer.

#include <string>
#include <windows.h>

void __declspec(noreturn) error_exit(const std::wstring FunctionName)
{
    // Retrieve the system error message for the last-error code
    const DWORD ERROR_ID = GetLastError();
    void* MsgBuffer = nullptr;
    LCID lcid;
    GetLocaleInfoEx(L"en-US", LOCALE_RETURN_NUMBER | LOCALE_ILANGUAGE, (wchar_t*)&lcid, sizeof(lcid));

    //get error message and attach it to Msgbuffer
    FormatMessageW(
        FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM | FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS,
        NULL, ERROR_ID, lcid, (wchar_t*)&MsgBuffer, 0, NULL);
    //concatonate string to DisplayBuffer
    const std::wstring DisplayBuffer = FunctionName + L" failed with error " + std::to_wstring(ERROR_ID) + L": " + static_cast<wchar_t*>(MsgBuffer);

    // Display the error message and exit the process
    MessageBoxExW(NULL, DisplayBuffer.c_str(), L"Error", MB_ICONERROR | MB_OK, static_cast<WORD>(lcid));

    ExitProcess(ERROR_ID);
}