Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Carnegie Mellon

Exception Handling in C++

Professor Hugh C. Lauer

CS-2303, System Programming Concepts
(Slides include materials from The C Programming Language, 2nd edition, by Kernighan and Ritchie,
Absolute C++, by Walter Savitch, The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup,
and from C: How to Program, 5th and 6th editions, by Deitel and Deitel)

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Outline
 What exceptions are and when to use them
 Using try, catch and throw to detect, handle and
indicate exceptions, respectively
 To process uncaught and unexpected exceptions
 To declare new exception classes
 How stack unwinding enables exceptions not
caught in one scope to be caught in another
scope
 To handle new failures
 To understand the standard exception hierarchy

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Introduction
 Exceptions
 Indicate problems that occur during a program’s
execution
 Occur infrequently
 Exception handling
 Can resolve exceptions
 Allow a program to continue executing or
 Notify the user of the problem and
 Terminate the program in a controlled manner
 Makes programs robust and fault-tolerant

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Exception Handling in C++

 A standard mechanism for processing errors
 Especially important when working on a project with a
large team of programmers

 C++ exception handling is much like Java’s

 Java’s exception handling is much like C++

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Fundamental Philosophy
 Mechanism for sending an exception signal up
the call stack
 Regardless of intervening calls

 Note: there is a mechanism based on same

philosophy in C
 setjmp(), longjmp()
 See man pages

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Traditional Exception Handling

 Intermixing program and error-handling logic
 Pseudocode outline
Perform a task
If the preceding task did not execute correctly
Perform error processing
Perform next task
If the preceding task did not execute correctly
Perform error processing
…
 Makes the program difficult to read, modify,
maintain and debug Note:– In most large systems, code to
 Impacts performance handle errors and exceptions represents
>80% of the total code of the system
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Fundamental Philosophy (continued)

 Remove error-handling code from the program
execution’s “main line”

 Programmers can handle any exceptions they

choose
 All exceptions
 All exceptions of a certain type
 All exceptions of a group of related types

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Fundamental Philosophy (continued)

 Programs can
 Recover from exceptions
 Hide exceptions
 Pass exceptions up the “chain of command”
 Ignore certain exceptions and let someone else handle
them

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Fundamental Philosophy (continued)

 An exception is a class
 Usually derived from one of the system’s exception
base classes
 If an exceptional or error situation occurs,
program throws an object of that class
 Object crawls up the call stack

 A calling program can choose to catch exceptions

of certain classes
 Take action based on the exception object

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Class exception
 The standard C++ base class for all exceptions
 Provides derived classes with virtual function
what()
 Returns the exception’s stored error message

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Example — Divide by Zero

1 // Fig. 27.1: DivideByZeroException.h

2 // Class DivideByZeroException definition.
3 #include <stdexcept> // stdexcept header file contains runtime_error
4 using std::runtime_error; // standard C++ library class runtime_error
5
6 // DivideByZeroException objects should be thrown by functions
7 // upon detecting division-by-zero exceptions
8 class DivideByZeroException : public runtime_error
9 {
10 public:
11 // constructor specifies default error message
12 DivideByZeroException::DivideByZeroException()
13 : runtime_error( "attempted to divide by zero" ) {}
14 }; // end class DivideByZeroException

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1 // Fig. 27.2: Fig27_02.cpp
2 // A simple exception-handling example that checks for example
3
4
// divide-by-zero exceptions.
#include <iostream>
– (1 of 2)
5 using std::cin;
6 using std::cout;
7 using std::endl;
8
9 #include "DivideByZeroException.h" // DivideByZeroException class
10
11 // perform division and throw DivideByZeroException object if
12 // divide-by-zero exception occurs
13 double quotient( int numerator, int denominator )
14 {
15 // throw DivideByZeroException if trying to divide by zero
16 if ( denominator == 0 )
17 throw DivideByZeroException(); // terminate function
18
19 // return division result
20 return static_cast< double >( numerator ) / denominator;
21 } // end function quotient
22
23 int main()
24 {
25 int number1; // user-specified numerator
26 int number2; // user-specified denominator
27 double result; // result of division
28
29 cout << "Enter two integers (end-of-file to end): ";

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example
30
31 // enable user to enter two integers to divide
– (2 of 2)
32 while ( cin >> number1 >> number2 )
33 {
34 // try block contains code that might throw exception
35 // and code that should not execute if an exception occurs
36 try
37 {
38 result = quotient( number1, number2 );
39 cout << "The quotient is: " << result << endl;
40 } // end try
41
42 // exception handler handles a divide-by-zero exception
43 catch ( DivideByZeroException &divideByZeroException )
44 {
45 cout << "Exception occurred: "
46 << divideByZeroException.what() << endl;
47 } // end catch
48
49 cout << "\nEnter two integers (end-of-file to end): ";
50 } // end while
51
52 cout << endl;
53 return 0; // terminate normally
54 } // end main

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Questions?

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try Blocks
 Keyword try followed by curly braces "{}“

 Should enclose
 Statements that might cause exceptions
 Statements that should be skipped in case of an
exception

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Software Engineering Observation

 Exceptions may surface
 through explicitly mentioned code in a try block,
 through calls to other functions and
 through deeply nested function calls initiated by code in
a try block.

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Catch Handlers
 Immediately follow a try block
 One or more catch handlers for each try block
 Keyword catch
 Exception parameter enclosed in parentheses
 Represents the type of exception to process
 Can provide an optional parameter name to interact
with the caught exception object
 Executes if exception parameter type matches
the exception thrown in the try block
 Could be a base class of the thrown exception’s class

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Catch Handlers (continued)

try { Other classes of exceptions
// code to try
are not handled here
}
catch (exceptionClass1 &name1) {
// handle exceptions of exceptionClass1
}
catch (exceptionClass2 &name2) {
// handle exceptions of exceptionClass2
}
catch (exceptionClass3 &name3) { catch clauses attempted
// handle exceptions of exceptionClass3
in order; first match wins!
}
...
/* code to execute if no exception or
if catch handler successfully handled exception*/

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Common Programming Errors

Syntax error to place code between a try block
and its corresponding catch handlers

Each catch handler can have only a single

parameter
 Specifying a comma-separated list of exception
parameters is a syntax error

 Logic error to catch same type in two different

catch handlers following a single try block

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Fundamental Philosophy (continued)

 Termination model of exception handling
 try block expires when an exception occurs
 Local variables in try block go out of scope
 Code within the matching catch handler executes
 Control resumes with the first statement after the last
catch handler following the try block
Control does not return to throw point
 Stack unwinding
 Occurs if no matching catch handler is found
 Program attempts to locate another enclosing try block
in the calling function

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Stack “Unwinding”
 Occurs when a thrown exception is not caught in
a particular scope
 Unwinding a Function terminates that function
 All local variables of the function are destroyed
Invokes destructors

 Control returns to point where function was invoked
 Attempts are made to catch the exception in
outer try…catch blocks
 If the exception is never caught, the function
terminate() is called

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Observations
 With exception handling, program can continue
executing after dealing with a problem
 rather than terminating

 Helps to support robust applications that

contribute to mission-critical computing or
business-critical computing

 When no exceptions occur, there is no

performance penalty

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Throwing an Exception
 Use keyword throw followed by an operand
representing the type of exception
 The throw operand can be of any type
 If the throw operand is an object, it is called an
exception object
 The throw operand initializes the exception
parameter in the matching catch handler, if one
is found

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Notes
 Catching an exception object by reference
eliminates the overhead of copying the object
that represents the thrown exception

 Associating each type of runtime error with an

appropriately named exception object improves
program clarity.

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When to Use Exception Handling

Don’t use for routine stuff
 To process synchronous errors such as end-of-file or null
 Occur when a statement executes string checking
 Not to process asynchronous errors
 Occur concurrently with, and independent of, program
execution
 To process problems arising in predefined
software elements
 Such as predefined functions and classes
 Error handling can be performed by customized
program code based on the application needs

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Software Engineering Notes

 Incorporate exception-handling strategy into system
design from the start
 Very difficult to retrofit after the system has been implemented!

 Exception handling provides uniform technique for

processing problems
 Helps with understandability of each other’s error handling code

 Avoid using exception handling as an alternate form

of flow of control
 These “additional” exceptions can “get in the way” of genuine
error handling

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Re-throwing an Exception
 Empty throw; statement

 Use when a catch handler cannot or can only

partially process an exception

 Next enclosing try block attempts to match the

exception with one of its catch handlers

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Common Programming Error

Executing an empty throw statement outside a
catch handler causes a function call to terminate
 Abandons exception processing and terminates the
program immediately

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Exception Specifications
 Also called throw lists
 Keyword throw Optional!
 Comma-separated list of exception classes in
parentheses
 Example
 int someFunction( double value )
throw ( ExceptionA, ExceptionB,
ExceptionC )
{
...
}
 Indicates someFunction can throw types ExceptionA,
ExceptionB and ExceptionC
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Exception Specifications (continued)

 A function can throw only exceptions of types in
its specification (or derived types)
 If a function throws a non-specification exception,
function unexpected is called
 This usually terminates the program
 Absence of exception specification indicates that
the function can throw any exception
 An empty exception specification, throw(),
indicates the function cannot throw any
exceptions

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Error Note
 Compiler will not generate compilation error if
 Function contains a throw expression for an exception
not listed in exception specification
 Error occurs only when that function attempts to
throw that exception
 At run time
 To avoid surprises at execution time, carefully
check your code to ensure that functions do not
throw exceptions not listed in their exception
specifications

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Questions?

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Constructors and Destructors

 Exceptions and constructors
 Exceptions enable constructors to report errors
 Unable to return values
 Exceptions thrown by constructors cause any already-
constructed component objects to call their destructors
 Only objects that have already been constructed will be destroyed
 Exceptions and destructors
 Destructors are called for all automatic objects in the
terminated try block when an exception is thrown
 Acquired resources can be placed in local objects to automatically
release the resources when an exception occurs
 If a destructor invoked by stack unwinding throws an
exception, function terminate() is called

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Note
 When an exception is thrown from the
constructor for an object that is created in a new
expression, …

 … the dynamically allocated memory for that

object is released.

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Exceptions and Inheritance

 New exception classes can be defined to inherit
from existing exception classes

 A catch handler for a particular exception class

can also catch exceptions of classes derived from
that class
 Enables catching related errors with a concise
notation

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Failure of calls to new

 Some compilers throw a bad_alloc exception
 Compliant with the C++ standard specification
 Some compilers return 0
 C++ standard-compliant compilers also have a version
of new that returns 0
 Use expression new( nothrow ), where nothrow is of type
nothrow_t
 Some compilers throw bad_alloc if <new> is
included

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Standard Library exception classes

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Standard Library Exception Hierarchy

 Base-class exception
 Contains virtual function what() for storing error
messages
 Exception classes derived from exception
 bad_alloc – thrown by new
 bad_cast – thrown by dynamic_cast
 bad_typeid – thrown by typeid
 bad_exception – thrown by unexpected
 Instead of terminating the program or calling the function
specified by set_unexpected
 Used only if bad_exception is in function’s throw list

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Exception Handling Summary

 Exceptions are derived from class exception
 Exceptional or error condition is indicated by
throwing an object of that class
 Created by constructor in throw statement
 Calling programs can check for exceptions with
try...catch construct
 Unified method of handling exceptions
 Far superior to coding exception handling in long hand
 No performance impact when no exceptions

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Exception Handling Summary (continued)

 Many more details — see
 Absolute C++, Chapter 18
 Any other textbook
 C++ standard

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Questions?

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