Consoleerrorerror

Consoleerrorerror is an informal term used in software development to describe a situation where a log entry produced by a console.error call contributes to additional errors, creating a noisy, sometimes recursive cascade of messages. It is not an official error type but rather a label used in debugging discussions and issue trackers to describe logging-induced errors or log storms.

Causes and mechanisms vary, but common scenarios include an error handler that itself throws, a logging implementation that attempts to format or serialize an error object and fails, or code paths that rethrow errors inside error-handling or logging subscribers. Some environments can inadvertently re-execute error-handling logic when a console error is emitted, amplifying the problem and producing repeated or duplicate messages.

Symptoms of consoleerrorerror include rapid growth in the number of error messages, log flooding, higher CPU or memory usage, and difficulty identifying the root cause, since the console noise can obscure the original error. Developers may also observe unstable behavior if the logging path interacts with error propagation in unintended ways.

Mitigation focuses on making error handling and logging robust. Best practices include avoiding throwing from within catch blocks, preventing serialization or formatting routines from throwing, implementing log rate limiting or deduplication, separating user-facing messages from internal diagnostics, and disabling verbose console logging in production. Thorough testing for error paths and using structured, resilient logging can reduce the risk of consoleerrorerror scenarios.

See also: console.error, error handling, logging, exception, recursion.