glGetError Subroutine

OpenGL 1.1 for AIX: Reference Manual

glGetError Subroutine

Purpose

Returns error information.

Library

OpenGL C bindings library: libGL.a

C Syntax

GLenum glGetError( void )

Description

The glGetError subroutine returns the value of the error flag. Each detectable error is assigned a numeric code and symbolic name. When an error occurs, the error flag is set to the appropriate error code value. No other errors are recorded until glGetError is called, the error code is returned, and the flag is reset to GL_NO_ERROR. If a call to glGetError returns GL_NO_ERROR, there has been no detectable error since the last call to glGetError, or since the GL was initialized.

To allow for distributed implementations, there may be several error flags. If any single error flag has recorded an error, the value of that flag is returned, and that flag is reset to GL_NO_ERROR when glGetError is called. If more than one flag has recorded an error, glGetError returns and clears an arbitrary error flag value. Therefore, glGetError should always be called in a loop, until it returns GL_NO_ERROR, if all error flags are to be reset.

Initially, all error flags are set to GL_NO_ERROR.

The currently defined errors are:

GL_NO_ERROR	No error has been recorded. The value of this symbolic constant is guaranteed to be 0 (zero).
GL_INVALID_ENUM	An unacceptable value is specified for an enumerated argument. The offending command is ignored, having no side effect other than to set the error flag.
GL_INVALID_VALUE	A numeric argument is out of range. The offending command is ignored, having no side effect other than to set the error flag.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION	The specified operation is not allowed in the current state. The offending command is ignored, having no side effect other than to set the error flag.
GL_STACK_OVERFLOW	This command would cause a stack overflow. The offending command is ignored, having no side effect other than to set the error flag.
GL_STACK_UNDERFLOW	This command would cause a stack underflow. The offending command is ignored, having no side effect other than to set the error flag.
GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY	There is not enough memory left to execute the command. The state of the GL is undefined, except for the state of the error flags, after this error is recorded.

When an error flag is set, results of a GL operation are undefined only if GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY has occurred. In all other cases, the command generating the error is ignored and has no effect on the GL state or frame buffer contents.

Errors

GL_INVALID_OPERATION

The glGetError subroutine is called between a call to glBegin and the corresponding call to glEnd.

Files

/usr/include/GL/gl.h

Contains C language constants, variable type definitions, and ANSI function prototypes fo OpenGL.

Related Information

The glBegin or glEnd subroutine.

OpenGL Overview.