Re: Throw from a destructor

C++ers:

I have this friend who thinks C++ cannot throw from a destructor.

I think throwing from a destructor is bad Karma, and should be designed
around, but that C++ cannot strictly prevent the actual event.

(One compiler-oriented reason is a compiler might not be able to detect
that the call-tree from a destructor leads to a throw.)

Put another way, suppose I have a big object, aBigSimCity, and it has a
.shutdown() method. It must call before ~BigSimCity() calls, and it might
throw. This implies my Wrapper class, containing aBigSimCity, should never
declare a destructor like this: ~Wrapper() { aBigSimCity.shutdown(); }.

.shutdown() might throw, and I don't feel like wrapping it in
try{}catch(). ~Wrapper should not throw, hence I need a better system to
break things down.

So which of us is right?