Re: Rethrow from other place than catch-block

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
17 May 2006 17:59:59 -0400
Message-ID:
<4d0u7oF17qk54U1@individual.net>
* mathiasn:

Is it legal to rethrow an exception from a function called from the
catch block?


Yes, but it's not supported by some older compilers, in particular, it's
not supported by Visual C++ 6.0 and earlier (a compiler bug wrt.
destructor calls).

Is the following program legal C++?


No, because

1) it's lacking

   #include <ostream>

;-)

2) it's using a non-standard startup function '_tmain'; of course
    that's meant to be defined as a preprocessor symbol 'main' when
    building the program, but it won't compile without such def.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
void ExceptionHandler(const char* context)
{
     cout << "In ExceptionHandler(" << context << "):";
     try // Setup a new try-block and rethrow the exception
     {
         throw;
     }
     catch (const int& e)
     {
         cout << "int = " << e << "\n";
     }
     catch (const char* e)
     {
         cout << "text = " << e << "\n";
     }
     catch (...)
     {
         cout << "UNKNOWN\n";
     }
}
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
     for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
     {
         try
         {
             switch (i)
             {
             case 0: throw 42;
             case 1: throw "Some text";
             case 2: throw 12.4;
             case 3: cout << "Still alive\n"; break;
             case 4:
                 {
                     try
                     {
                         throw "Another text";
                     }
                     catch (...)
                     {
                         ExceptionHandler("Other context");
                     }
                 }
                 break;
             }
         }
         catch (...) // Catch all exceptions here
         {
             ExceptionHandler("Inside for loop");
         }
     }
     return 0;
}

This small testprogram compiles and runs as expected with Visual C++
2005. But in our bigger system we are expecting that code like this is
causing problems.


I would also expect that, because the function breaks a golden rule of
design: separation of concerns.

Let the function return the information needed to process the exception,
e.g., some descriptive text, or let it rethrow the exception with some
project-standard exception type.

Don't let it process the exception: it doesn't know what's appropriate.

--
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