Re: How to make this exception-safe

From:
Seungbeom Kim <musiphil@bawi.org>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:25:46 CST
Message-ID:
<gfv659$o59$1@news.stanford.edu>
Triple-DES wrote:

Consider the following code:

#include <vector>

struct C {
   explicit C(int) {} // may throw
   private:
     C(const C&);
     C& operator=(const C&);
};

struct V {
   V() {
     // may leak if push_back or C::C(int) throws
      v_.push_back( new C(2) );
      v_.push_back( new C(1) );
      v_.push_back( new C(3) );
   }

   ~V() {} // delete all elems of v

private:
   std::vector<C*> v_;
};

How would you go about making an exception-safe version of V::V()?


A general rule is that a newly acquired resource should immediately
be owned by an object of a class that manages the resource properly.
In this case, the result of new C(...) should immediately be owned
by a smart pointer, or a vector of pointers that manages the pointees.

This is what I could come up with:

// 1st attempt
#include <memory>

V::V() {
   v_.reserve(3);

   std::auto_ptr<C> c1( new C(2) );
   std::auto_ptr<C> c2( new C(1) );
   std::auto_ptr<C> c3( new C(3) );

   v_.push_back( c1.release() );
   v_.push_back( c2.release() );
   v_.push_back( c3.release() );
}

Which is tedious if you are inserting more objects. Does anyone have a
better solution?
PS! boost/tr1 shared_ptr or similar can not be used.


The above attempt doesn't help you much, because after release(),
push_back() can still throw and the C object goes unmanaged.

One way is to keep the auto_ptr objects through the lifetime of V
(as data members) and not calling release(), so that the auto_ptr
objects manage the C objects. Another way is to use a vector-of-
pointers class that manages the objects pointed to by its elements.
Its push_back() function should, in particular, destroy the object
pointed to by the argument if expanding the internal buffer fails.

--
Seungbeom Kim

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