How can errors be handled in C?

Handling errors in C is fundamentally about ensuring that the program can respond to unexpected or undesirable situations in a controlled manner, allowing the program to either recover from the error or provide informative feedback to the user or programmer. Using condition checks and return values is a common and effective method for error handling in C.

When a function in C completes its operation, it often returns a value that indicates whether it was successful or if an error occurred. By checking these return values, programmers can decide how to proceed. For example, if a file operation function fails to open a specified file, it can return a special value (like NULL or a negative integer). The caller can then implement logic depending on the return value—such as retrying the operation, logging the error, or gracefully informing the user.

Additionally, C provides various standard library functions, such as errno, which can be used to gain more insight into the nature of the error when something goes wrong. By checking the return values and the state set in errno, programs can handle errors in a robust way.

The other options, while they may have their uses in programming, do not directly address the conventional and effective patterns for error handling in C. Multi-threading could complicate error handling by introducing