Is it possible to obtain the name of the current procedure/function as a string, within a procedure/function? I suppose there would be some "macro" that is expanded at compile-time.
My scenario is this: I have a lot of procedures that are given a record and they all need to start by checking the validity of the record, and so they pass the record to a "validator procedure". The validator procedure (the same one for all procedures) raises an exception if the record is invalid, and I want the message of the exception to include not the name of the validator procedure, but the name of the function/procedure that called the validator procedure (naturally).
That is, I have
procedure ValidateStruct(const Struct: TMyStruct; const Sender: string);
begin
if <StructIsInvalid> then
raise Exception.Create(Sender + ': Structure is invalid.');
end;
and then
procedure SomeProc1(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, 'SomeProc1');
...
end;
...
procedure SomeProcN(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, 'SomeProcN');
...
end;
It would be somewhat less error-prone if I instead could write something like
procedure SomeProc1(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, {$PROCNAME});
...
end;
...
procedure SomeProcN(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, {$PROCNAME});
...
end;
and then each time the compiler encounters a {$PROCNAME}, it simply replaces the "macro" with the name of the current function/procedure as a string literal.
Update
The problem with the first approach is that it is error-prone. For instance, it happens easily that you get it wrong due to copy-paste:
procedure SomeProc3(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, 'SomeProc1');
...
end;
or typos:
procedure SomeProc3(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, 'SoemProc3');
...
end;
or just temporary confusion:
procedure SomeProc3(const Struct: TMyStruct);
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, 'SameProc3');
...
end;
We are doing something similar and only rely on a convention: putting a const SMethodName
holding the function name at the very beginning.
Then all our routines follow the same template, and we use this const in Assert and other Exception raising.
Because of the proximity of the const with the routine name, there is little chance a typo or any discrepancy would stay there for long.
YMMV of course...
procedure SomeProc1(const Struct: TMyStruct);
const
SMethodName = 'SomeProc1';
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, SMethodName);
...
end;
...
procedure SomeProcN(const Struct: TMyStruct);
const
SMethodName = 'SomeProcN';
begin
ValidateStruct(Struct, SMethodName);
...
end;