API Reference › Builtin functions › panic
function

panic

panic(msg: string)

Prints file:line: panic: <msg> to standard error and aborts the process with exit code 1. It turns "something went wrong" into a clear, located message a non-expert can act on — the opposite of a raw segfault or a silent wrong result. Use it for the unrecoverable case: a corrupt asset, a broken invariant, a branch that should be impossible. The source location is baked in at compile time, so the message always points at the exact call. For a guarded check that only aborts when a condition fails, use assert.

Recoverable failures — a missing save, a bad network packet — are a different story: those should be values a game can fall back from rather than a panic. That value-carrying path is try/else over a result; panic covers the unrecoverable programmer-bug half.

Parameters

msga message describing what went wrong (a string)

Example

program Demo {
  function pick(options: int, n: int) -> int {
    if n < 0 { panic("choice index is negative") }
    if n >= options { panic("choice index out of range") }
    return n
  }
  entry {
    print(pick(3, 1))     # 1
    print(pick(3, 9))     # aborts: Demo.ludic:6: panic: choice index out of range
  }
}
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