error

An exception that indicates failure of a requested action or an illegal specification. Errors can occur during compilation--during preprocessing of program statements or during the linking stage--or during execution of the program. At run time, some errors are fatal in that the program cannot continue execution (run-time errors); others are recoverable in that the program can take corrective action and continue execution. Rounding errors can occur during truncation in rounding; overflow errors can occur during arithmetic operations in which the size of the result is larger than the size of the space in which the result is to be stored.

See also compile, error handling, exception, execute, link, status variable, truncation.