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Exceptions
Exceptions provide a way to react to exceptional circumstances (like runtime
errors) in our program by transferring control to special functions called handlers.
To catch exceptions we must place a portion of code under exception inspection.
This is done by enclosing that portion of code in a try block. When an exceptional
circumstance arises within that block, an exception is thrown that transfers the
control to the exception handler. If no exception is thrown, the code continues
normally and all handlers are ignored.
A exception is thrown by using the throw keyword from inside the try block.
Exception handlers are declared with the keyword
cat ch
, which must be placed
immediately after the try block:
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/ / except i ons
#i ncl ude <i ost r eam>
usi ng namespace st d;
i nt mai n ( ) {
t r y
{
t hr ow 20;
}
cat ch ( i nt e)
{
cout << "An except i on occur r ed. Except i on Nr . " << e << endl ;
}
r et ur n 0;
}
An except i on occur r ed. Except i on Nr . 20
The code under exception handling is enclosed in a
t r y
block. In this example
this code simply throws an exception:
t hr ow 20;
A throw expression accepts one parameter (in this case the integer value
20
),
which is passed as an argument to the exception handler.
The exception handler is declared with the
cat ch
keyword. As you can see, it
follows immediately the closing brace of the
t r y
block. The catch format is similar
to a regular function that always has at least one parameter. The type of this
parameter is very important, since the type of the argument passed by the throw
expression is checked against it, and only in the case they match, the exception
is caught.
We can chain multiple handlers (catch expressions), each one with a different
parameter type. Only the handler that matches its type with the argument
specified in the throw statement is executed.
If we use an ellipsis (
. . .
) as the parameter of
cat ch
, that handler will catch any
exception no matter what the type of the
t hr ow
exception is. This can be used as
a default handler that catches all exceptions not caught by other handlers if it is
specified at last:
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t r y {
/ / code her e
}
cat ch ( i nt par am) { cout << "i nt except i on"; }
cat ch ( char par am) { cout << " char except i on"; }
cat ch ( . . . ) { cout << "def aul t except i on"; }
In this case the last handler would catch any exception thrown with any
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parameter that is neither an
i nt
nor a
char
.
After an exception has been handled the program execution resumes after the
t r y- cat ch
block, not after the
t hr ow
statement!.
It is also possible to nest
t r y- cat ch
blocks within more external
t r y
blocks. In
these cases, we have the possibility that an internal
cat ch
block forwards the
exception to its external level. This is done with the expression
t hr ow;
with no
arguments. For example:
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t r y {
t r y {
/ / code her e
}
cat ch ( i nt n) {
t hr ow;
}
}
cat ch ( . . . ) {
cout << " Except i on occur r ed" ;
}
Exception specifications
When declaring a function we can limit the exception type it might directly or
indirectly throw by appending a
t hr ow
suffix to the function declaration:
f l oat myf unct i on ( char par am) t hr ow ( i nt ) ;
This declares a function called
myf unct i on
which takes one agument of type
char
and returns an element of type
f l oat
. The only exception that this function might
throw is an exception of type
i nt
. If it throws an exception with a different type,
either directly or indirectly, it cannot be caught by a regular
i nt
-type handler.
If this
t hr ow
specifier is left empty with no type, this means the function is not
allowed to throw exceptions. Functions with no
t hr ow
specifier (regular functions)
are allowed to throw exceptions with any type:
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i nt myf unct i on ( i nt par am) t hr ow( ) ; / / no except i ons al l owed
i nt myf unct i on ( i nt par am) ; / / al l except i ons al l owed
Standard exceptions
The C++ Standard library provides a base class specifically designed to declare
objects to be thrown as exceptions. It is called
except i on
and is defined in the
<except i on>
header file under the
namespace st d
. This class has the usual
default and copy constructors, operators and destructors, plus an additional
virtual member function called
what
that returns a null-terminated character
sequence (
char *
) and that can be overwritten in derived classes to contain
some sort of description of the exception.
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/ / st andar d except i ons
#i ncl ude <i ost r eam>
#i ncl ude <except i on>
usi ng namespace st d;
cl ass myexcept i on: publ i c except i on
{
vi r t ual const char * what ( ) const t hr ow( )
{
r et ur n "My except i on happened";
}
} myex;
i nt mai n ( ) {
t r y
{
t hr ow myex;
}
cat ch ( except i on& e)
{
cout << e. what ( ) << endl ;
}
r et ur n 0;
My except i on happened.
1/11/2010 Exceptions
G:/MuGni's//Exceptions.htm 2/3
24 }
We have placed a handler that catches exception objects by reference (notice
the ampersand
&
after the type), therefore this catches also classes derived from
except i on
, like our
myex
object of class
myexcept i on
.
All exceptions thrown by components of the C++ Standard library throw
exceptions derived from this
st d: : except i on
class. These are:
exception description
bad_alloc thrown by new on allocation failure
bad_cast thrown by dynamic_cast when fails with a referenced type
bad_exception thrown when an exception type doesn't match any catch
bad_typeid thrown by typeid
ios_base::failure thrown by functions in the iostream library
For example, if we use the operator
new
and the memory cannot be allocated, an
exception of type
bad_al l oc
is thrown:
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t r y
{
i nt * myar r ay= new i nt [ 1000] ;
}
cat ch ( bad_al l oc&)
{
cout << " Er r or al l ocat i ng memor y. " << endl ;
}
It is recommended to include all dynamic memory allocations within a try block
that catches this type of exception to perform a clean action instead of an
abnormal program termination, which is what happens when this type of
exception is thrown and not caught. If you want to force a
bad_al l oc
exception
to see it in action, you can try to allocate a huge array; On my system, trying to
allocate 1 billion
i nt
s threw a
bad_al l oc
exception.
Because
bad_al l oc
is derived from the standard base class
except i on
, we can
handle that same exception by catching references to the
except i on
class:
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/ / bad_al l oc st andar d except i on
#i ncl ude <i ost r eam>
#i ncl ude <except i on>
usi ng namespace st d;
i nt mai n ( ) {
t r y
{
i nt * myar r ay= new i nt [ 1000] ;
}
cat ch ( except i on& e)
{
cout << "St andar d except i on: " << e. what ( ) << endl ;
}
r et ur n 0;
}

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