A.7.4 Messages

During a Mathematica session messages can be generated either by explicit calls to Message, or in the course of executing other built-in functions.

Message names.

If no language is specified for a particular message, text for the message is sought in each of the languages specified by $Language. If f::name is not defined, a definition for General::name is sought. If still no message is found, any value defined for $NewMessage is applied to f and "name".

Off[message] prevents a specified message from ever being printed. Check allows you to determine whether particular messages were generated during the evaluation of an expression. $MessageList and MessageList[n] record all the messages that were generated during the evaluation of a particular line in a Mathematica session.

Messages are specified as strings to be used as the first argument of StringForm. $MessagePrePrint is applied to each expression to be spliced into the string.