CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wolfram-mathematica
Pillsy
Pillsy

Reputation: 9901

Finding previously defined messages in Mathematica

Mathematica by default defines a lot of useful messages for signaling common errors, like functions being called with the wrong number of arguments or files not being found. In general, I prefer to use existing, defined messages wherever possible, because it makes it easier for them to be handled via mechanisms like Check, Quiet and On/Off. However, all my attempts at finding what messages are currently defined have failed; obvious approaches like 

DownValues[MessageName]

don't work at all.

Is there a trick I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 236

Answers (1)

rcollyer
rcollyer

Reputation: 10695

That's a good question. In principle, you can display any messages associated with a symbol by using Messages[<symbol>]. However, according to the documentation, the system messages are not loaded until the message is actually used. But, $MessageGroups (new in 7) does provide a list of some of the messages available, but not nearly all.

EDIT: After some looking, I found the file $InstallationDirectory/SystemFiles/Kernel/TextResources/English/Messages.m that appears to contain all of the system wide messages.

Upvotes: 5

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