[ruby/irb] Rescue errors from main.to_s/inspect when formatting

prompt
(https://github.com/ruby/irb/pull/791)

Currently, IRB just terminates if `main.to_s` raises while IRB
constructs the prompt string. This can easily happen if the user wants
to start an IRB session in the instance scope of an uninitialized
object, for example:

```
class C
  def initialize
    binding.irb
    @values = []
  end

  def to_s = @values.join(',')  # raises if uninitialized
end

C.new
```

This patch makes IRB rescue from such an exception and displays the
class name of the exception instead of `main.to_s` to indicate some
error has occurred.

We may display more detailed information about the exception, but this
patch chooses not to do so because 1) the prompt has limited space,
2) users can evaluate `to_s` in IRB to examine the error if they want,
and 3) obtaining the details can also raise, which requires nested
exception handling and can be complicated.

https://github.com/ruby/irb/commit/412ab26067

2 files changed, 13 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/lib/irb.rb b/lib/irb.rb
index 8c3039482e..66149eb455 100644
--- a/lib/irb.rb
+++ b/lib/irb.rb
@@ -930,9 +930,11 @@ module IRB
         when "N"
           @context.irb_name
         when "m"
-          truncate_prompt_main(@context.main.to_s)
+          main_str = @context.main.to_s rescue "!#{$!.class}"
+          truncate_prompt_main(main_str)
         when "M"
-          truncate_prompt_main(@context.main.inspect)
+          main_str = @context.main.inspect rescue "!#{$!.class}"
+          truncate_prompt_main(main_str)
         when "l"
           ltype
         when "i"
diff --git a/test/irb/test_context.rb b/test/irb/test_context.rb
index ce57df6cdb..5804607d13 100644
--- a/test/irb/test_context.rb
+++ b/test/irb/test_context.rb
@@ -631,6 +631,15 @@ module TestIRB
       assert_equal('irb("aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...)>', irb.send(:format_prompt, 'irb(%M)>', nil, 1, 1))
     end
 
+    def test_prompt_main_raise
+      main = Object.new
+      def main.to_s; raise TypeError; end
+      def main.inspect; raise ArgumentError; end
+      irb = IRB::Irb.new(IRB::WorkSpace.new(main), TestInputMethod.new)
+      assert_equal("irb(!TypeError)>", irb.send(:format_prompt, 'irb(%m)>', nil, 1, 1))
+      assert_equal("irb(!ArgumentError)>", irb.send(:format_prompt, 'irb(%M)>', nil, 1, 1))
+    end
+
     def test_lineno
       input = TestInputMethod.new([
         "\n",