Remove description of Error In and Error Out terminals

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Currently each error in terminal contains the following description: "<B>error in</B> can accept error information wired from VIs previously called. Use this information to decide if any functionality should be bypassed in the event of errors from other VIs. Right-click the <B>error in</B> control on the front panel and select <B>Explain Error</B> or <B>Explain Warning</B> from the shortcut menu for more information about the error." This occupies 367 characters (bytes).

Currently each error out terminal contains the following description: "<B>error out</B> passes error or warning information out of a VI to be used by other VIs. Right-click the <B>error out</B> indicator on the front panel and select <B>Explain Error</B> or <B>Explain Warning</B> from the shortcut menu for more information about the error." This occupies 271 characters (bytes).

This applies to terminals of all styles: Classic, Modern, Silver, Fuse Design System.

This adds a total of 638 characters (0.62 KB) to each and every VI that uses a pair of error in/out terminals, which is probably a majority of VIs in LabVIEW.

The descriptions appear in the Context Help window and can be useful to beginners. But this benefit is not worth 638 bytes of space in so many VIs. The contents of the descriptions should be mentioned in training material such as LabVIEW Core 1 or the LabVIEW Help.

This proposal is to remove (clear) the error in and error out descriptions, such that VIs are "slimmer" and codebases are smaller.

[Basjong53]

While I agree that the description is not necessary, it doesn't add 0.62 KB. 

I created an empty VI with just an error in and error out terminal. Removing the description from both reduces the file size from 7 536 bytes to 7 410 bytes. A reduction of 126 bytes. Some compression is probably applied. Still a lot of unnecessary data, but not as bad as you mentioned.

LabVIEW 2021 SP1

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Hi Basjong53,

Thanks for mentioning this important information.

I have replicated your experiment: 1) created a new VI, 2) added error in and error out terminals from the Classic palette, 3) removed the descriptions of both terminals. After each step I measured the VI size by looking at the Windows file properties. I used LabVIEW 2025 Q3 64-bit and Windows 11.

VI size after step 1: 3,161 bytes
VI size after step 2: 5,053 bytes
VI size after step 3: 4,897 bytes

In this experiment removing the descriptions reduced the VI size by 156 bytes (5,053 bytes - 4,897 bytes).

I fully agree with your conclusion that some compression seems to be applied. It's useful that LabVIEW does this.

It's curious to me why yours and my experiment results are quite a bit different. I don't have access to LabVIEW 2021 SP1 at the moment, so can't easily replicate your setup.