There is a better way. Check out how Erlang embraces failure with its "let it crash" philosophy, and considers trying to handle every error condition manually ("defensive programming") an anti-pattern. Read the "Error handling philosophy" section of Joe Armstrong's thesis[1] if you want to learn more.

[1]: http://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf

I wonder if embrace the unix stdin/stdout is the solution.

I'm toying about a new languagte where each function have IN/OUT/ERR channels.

So, is possible to do:

result | err = open('file)

This consume the ERR channel, however, if is not:

result = open('file')

it "trow". Inside the open, any raise is like a return for the ERR channel.

This combined with RAII & scope like in D: http://dlang.org/exception-safe.html

In what ways is testing an error code with an if statement more manual than catching an exception with a try/catch?