(This is the documentation for SDL3, which is under heavy development and the API is changing! SDL2 is the current stable version!)

SDL_SetError

Set the SDL error message for the current thread.

Header File

Syntax

int SDL_SetError(SDL_PRINTF_FORMAT_STRING const char *fmt, ...) SDL_PRINTF_VARARG_FUNC(1);

Function Parameters

fmt	a printf()-style message format string
...	additional parameters matching % tokens in the `fmt` string, if any

Return Value

Returns always -1.

Remarks

Calling this function will replace any previous error message that was set.

This function always returns -1, since SDL frequently uses -1 to signify an failing result, leading to this idiom:

if (error_code) {
    return SDL_SetError("This operation has failed: %d", error_code);
}

Version

This function is available since SDL 3.0.0.

Code Examples

SDL_SetError("Something unexpected happened!");

int errorCode = 0;
/* ... */
errorCode = -37;
/* ... */
if (errorCode < 0)
    SDL_SetError("Something unexpected happened: Error Code %d", errorCode);