# Intercepting error messages - HOW?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/intercepting-error-messages-how/77189>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, error-message\
**Created:** [February 28, 2022, 2:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/intercepting-error-messages-how/77189 "2022-02-28T14:21:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jollywatt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jollywatt/32/202198_2.png) [@Jollywatt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Jollywatt)\
**Post date:** [August 18, 2022, 12:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/intercepting-error-messages-how/77189/11 "2022-08-18T00:24:55Z")

</div>

This is an exciting project to see being worked on!

IMO, one of the main disadvantages of Julia in terms of user experience, apart form [TTFX](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/taking-ttfx-seriously-can-we-make-common-packages-faster-to-load-and-use/74949), is that **error messages are often verbose and intimidating**.

It is not uncommon to receive three-page nested error messages when (ab)using `DataFrames.jl`, for example, and I think this is a significant problem for Julia’s general adoption. Especially for those coming from languages like Python, whose traceback messages are (mostly) very succinct and lucid, such long error messages can be scary and hard to glean information from.

I don’t think it’s appropriate for `Term.jl`’s style of displaying error messages to become Julia’s default, but I would love to see Julia’s error messages become something in between what they are now and the proof-of-concept shown in this post.

* * *

> [@FedeClaudi](#):
>
> I will try starting a discussion with the Julia devs, and perhaps use the hacky fix in the meanwhile.

I hope the Julia devs agree that providing an interface for intercepting and display error messages is a good investment. I’m thinking this might also be a boon for HTML-based front-ends like [`Pluto.jl`](https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl).

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/intercepting-error-messages-how/77189)._