To pass exception to program

Modern C++ best practices for exceptions and error handling

In modern C++, in most scenarios, the preferred way to report and handle both logic errors and runtime errors is to use exceptions. It’s especially true when the stack might contain several function calls between the function that detects the error, and the function that has the context to handle the error. Exceptions provide a formal, well-defined way for code that detects errors to pass the information up the call stack.

Use exceptions for exceptional code

Program errors are often divided into two categories: Logic errors that are caused by programming mistakes, for example, an «index out of range» error. And, runtime errors that are beyond the control of programmer, for example, a «network service unavailable» error. In C-style programming and in COM, error reporting is managed either by returning a value that represents an error code or a status code for a particular function, or by setting a global variable that the caller may optionally retrieve after every function call to see whether errors were reported. For example, COM programming uses the HRESULT return value to communicate errors to the caller. And the Win32 API has the GetLastError function to retrieve the last error that was reported by the call stack. In both of these cases, it’s up to the caller to recognize the code and respond to it appropriately. If the caller doesn’t explicitly handle the error code, the program might crash without warning. Or, it might continue to execute using bad data and produce incorrect results.

Exceptions are preferred in modern C++ for the following reasons:

An exception forces calling code to recognize an error condition and handle it. Unhandled exceptions stop program execution.

An exception jumps to the point in the call stack that can handle the error. Intermediate functions can let the exception propagate. They don’t have to coordinate with other layers.

The exception stack-unwinding mechanism destroys all objects in scope after an exception is thrown, according to well-defined rules.

An exception enables a clean separation between the code that detects the error and the code that handles the error.

The following simplified example shows the necessary syntax for throwing and catching exceptions in C++.

Exceptions in C++ resemble ones in languages such as C# and Java. In the try block, if an exception is thrown it will be caught by the first associated catch block whose type matches that of the exception. In other words, execution jumps from the throw statement to the catch statement. If no usable catch block is found, std::terminate is invoked and the program exits. In C++, any type may be thrown; however, we recommend that you throw a type that derives directly or indirectly from std::exception . In the previous example, the exception type, invalid_argument , is defined in the standard library in the header file. C++ doesn’t provide or require a finally block to make sure all resources are released if an exception is thrown. The resource acquisition is initialization (RAII) idiom, which uses smart pointers, provides the required functionality for resource cleanup. For more information, see How to: Design for exception safety. For information about the C++ stack-unwinding mechanism, see Exceptions and stack unwinding.

Basic guidelines

Robust error handling is challenging in any programming language. Although exceptions provide several features that support good error handling, they can’t do all the work for you. To realize the benefits of the exception mechanism, keep exceptions in mind as you design your code.

Use asserts to check for errors that should never occur. Use exceptions to check for errors that might occur, for example, errors in input validation on parameters of public functions. For more information, see the Exceptions versus assertions section.

Use exceptions when the code that handles the error is separated from the code that detects the error by one or more intervening function calls. Consider whether to use error codes instead in performance-critical loops, when code that handles the error is tightly coupled to the code that detects it.

For every function that might throw or propagate an exception, provide one of the three exception guarantees: the strong guarantee, the basic guarantee, or the nothrow (noexcept) guarantee. For more information, see How to: Design for exception safety.

Throw exceptions by value, catch them by reference. Don’t catch what you can’t handle.

Don’t use exception specifications, which are deprecated in C++11. For more information, see the Exception specifications and noexcept section.

Use standard library exception types when they apply. Derive custom exception types from the exception Class hierarchy.

Don’t allow exceptions to escape from destructors or memory-deallocation functions.

Exceptions and performance

The exception mechanism has a minimal performance cost if no exception is thrown. If an exception is thrown, the cost of the stack traversal and unwinding is roughly comparable to the cost of a function call. Additional data structures are required to track the call stack after a try block is entered, and additional instructions are required to unwind the stack if an exception is thrown. However, in most scenarios, the cost in performance and memory footprint isn’t significant. The adverse effect of exceptions on performance is likely to be significant only on memory-constrained systems. Or, in performance-critical loops, where an error is likely to occur regularly and there’s tight coupling between the code to handle it and the code that reports it. In any case, it’s impossible to know the actual cost of exceptions without profiling and measuring. Even in those rare cases when the cost is significant, you can weigh it against the increased correctness, easier maintainability, and other advantages that are provided by a well-designed exception policy.

Exceptions versus assertions

Exceptions and asserts are two distinct mechanisms for detecting run-time errors in a program. Use assert statements to test for conditions during development that should never be true if all your code is correct. There’s no point in handling such an error by using an exception, because the error indicates that something in the code has to be fixed. It doesn’t represent a condition that the program has to recover from at run time. An assert stops execution at the statement so that you can inspect the program state in the debugger. An exception continues execution from the first appropriate catch handler. Use exceptions to check error conditions that might occur at run time even if your code is correct, for example, «file not found» or «out of memory.» Exceptions can handle these conditions, even if the recovery just outputs a message to a log and ends the program. Always check arguments to public functions by using exceptions. Even if your function is error-free, you might not have complete control over arguments that a user might pass to it.

C++ exceptions versus Windows SEH exceptions

Both C and C++ programs can use the structured exception handling (SEH) mechanism in the Windows operating system. The concepts in SEH resemble the ones in C++ exceptions, except that SEH uses the __try , __except , and __finally constructs instead of try and catch . In the Microsoft C++ compiler (MSVC), C++ exceptions are implemented for SEH. However, when you write C++ code, use the C++ exception syntax.

Exception specifications and noexcept

Exception specifications were introduced in C++ as a way to specify the exceptions that a function might throw. However, exception specifications proved problematic in practice, and are deprecated in the C++11 draft standard. We recommend that you don’t use throw exception specifications except for throw() , which indicates that the function allows no exceptions to escape. If you must use exception specifications of the deprecated form throw( type-name ) , MSVC support is limited. For more information, see Exception Specifications (throw). The noexcept specifier is introduced in C++11 as the preferred alternative to throw() .

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8. Errors and Exceptions¶

Until now error messages haven’t been more than mentioned, but if you have tried out the examples you have probably seen some. There are (at least) two distinguishable kinds of errors: syntax errors and exceptions.

8.1. Syntax Errors¶

Syntax errors, also known as parsing errors, are perhaps the most common kind of complaint you get while you are still learning Python:

The parser repeats the offending line and displays a little ‘arrow’ pointing at the earliest point in the line where the error was detected. The error is caused by (or at least detected at) the token preceding the arrow: in the example, the error is detected at the function print() , since a colon ( ‘:’ ) is missing before it. File name and line number are printed so you know where to look in case the input came from a script.

8.2. Exceptions¶

Even if a statement or expression is syntactically correct, it may cause an error when an attempt is made to execute it. Errors detected during execution are called exceptions and are not unconditionally fatal: you will soon learn how to handle them in Python programs. Most exceptions are not handled by programs, however, and result in error messages as shown here:

The last line of the error message indicates what happened. Exceptions come in different types, and the type is printed as part of the message: the types in the example are ZeroDivisionError , NameError and TypeError . The string printed as the exception type is the name of the built-in exception that occurred. This is true for all built-in exceptions, but need not be true for user-defined exceptions (although it is a useful convention). Standard exception names are built-in identifiers (not reserved keywords).

The rest of the line provides detail based on the type of exception and what caused it.

The preceding part of the error message shows the context where the exception occurred, in the form of a stack traceback. In general it contains a stack traceback listing source lines; however, it will not display lines read from standard input.

Built-in Exceptions lists the built-in exceptions and their meanings.

8.3. Handling Exceptions¶

It is possible to write programs that handle selected exceptions. Look at the following example, which asks the user for input until a valid integer has been entered, but allows the user to interrupt the program (using Control — C or whatever the operating system supports); note that a user-generated interruption is signalled by raising the KeyboardInterrupt exception.

The try statement works as follows.

First, the try clause (the statement(s) between the try and except keywords) is executed.

If no exception occurs, the except clause is skipped and execution of the try statement is finished.

If an exception occurs during execution of the try clause, the rest of the clause is skipped. Then, if its type matches the exception named after the except keyword, the except clause is executed, and then execution continues after the try/except block.

If an exception occurs which does not match the exception named in the except clause, it is passed on to outer try statements; if no handler is found, it is an unhandled exception and execution stops with a message as shown above.

A try statement may have more than one except clause, to specify handlers for different exceptions. At most one handler will be executed. Handlers only handle exceptions that occur in the corresponding try clause, not in other handlers of the same try statement. An except clause may name multiple exceptions as a parenthesized tuple, for example:

A class in an except clause is compatible with an exception if it is the same class or a base class thereof (but not the other way around — an except clause listing a derived class is not compatible with a base class). For example, the following code will print B, C, D in that order:

Note that if the except clauses were reversed (with except B first), it would have printed B, B, B — the first matching except clause is triggered.

When an exception occurs, it may have associated values, also known as the exception’s arguments. The presence and types of the arguments depend on the exception type.

The except clause may specify a variable after the exception name. The variable is bound to the exception instance which typically has an args attribute that stores the arguments. For convenience, builtin exception types define __str__() to print all the arguments without explicitly accessing .args .

The exception’s __str__() output is printed as the last part (‘detail’) of the message for unhandled exceptions.

BaseException is the common base class of all exceptions. One of its subclasses, Exception , is the base class of all the non-fatal exceptions. Exceptions which are not subclasses of Exception are not typically handled, because they are used to indicate that the program should terminate. They include SystemExit which is raised by sys.exit() and KeyboardInterrupt which is raised when a user wishes to interrupt the program.

Exception can be used as a wildcard that catches (almost) everything. However, it is good practice to be as specific as possible with the types of exceptions that we intend to handle, and to allow any unexpected exceptions to propagate on.

The most common pattern for handling Exception is to print or log the exception and then re-raise it (allowing a caller to handle the exception as well):

The try … except statement has an optional else clause, which, when present, must follow all except clauses. It is useful for code that must be executed if the try clause does not raise an exception. For example:

The use of the else clause is better than adding additional code to the try clause because it avoids accidentally catching an exception that wasn’t raised by the code being protected by the try … except statement.

Exception handlers do not handle only exceptions that occur immediately in the try clause, but also those that occur inside functions that are called (even indirectly) in the try clause. For example:

8.4. Raising Exceptions¶

The raise statement allows the programmer to force a specified exception to occur. For example:

The sole argument to raise indicates the exception to be raised. This must be either an exception instance or an exception class (a class that derives from BaseException , such as Exception or one of its subclasses). If an exception class is passed, it will be implicitly instantiated by calling its constructor with no arguments:

If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but don’t intend to handle it, a simpler form of the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception:

8.5. Exception Chaining¶

If an unhandled exception occurs inside an except section, it will have the exception being handled attached to it and included in the error message:

To indicate that an exception is a direct consequence of another, the raise statement allows an optional from clause:

This can be useful when you are transforming exceptions. For example:

It also allows disabling automatic exception chaining using the from None idiom:

For more information about chaining mechanics, see Built-in Exceptions .

8.6. User-defined Exceptions¶

Programs may name their own exceptions by creating a new exception class (see Classes for more about Python classes). Exceptions should typically be derived from the Exception class, either directly or indirectly.

Exception classes can be defined which do anything any other class can do, but are usually kept simple, often only offering a number of attributes that allow information about the error to be extracted by handlers for the exception.

Most exceptions are defined with names that end in “Error”, similar to the naming of the standard exceptions.

Many standard modules define their own exceptions to report errors that may occur in functions they define.

8.7. Defining Clean-up Actions¶

The try statement has another optional clause which is intended to define clean-up actions that must be executed under all circumstances. For example:

If a finally clause is present, the finally clause will execute as the last task before the try statement completes. The finally clause runs whether or not the try statement produces an exception. The following points discuss more complex cases when an exception occurs:

If an exception occurs during execution of the try clause, the exception may be handled by an except clause. If the exception is not handled by an except clause, the exception is re-raised after the finally clause has been executed.

An exception could occur during execution of an except or else clause. Again, the exception is re-raised after the finally clause has been executed.

If the finally clause executes a break , continue or return statement, exceptions are not re-raised.

If the try statement reaches a break , continue or return statement, the finally clause will execute just prior to the break , continue or return statement’s execution.

If a finally clause includes a return statement, the returned value will be the one from the finally clause’s return statement, not the value from the try clause’s return statement.

A more complicated example:

As you can see, the finally clause is executed in any event. The TypeError raised by dividing two strings is not handled by the except clause and therefore re-raised after the finally clause has been executed.

In real world applications, the finally clause is useful for releasing external resources (such as files or network connections), regardless of whether the use of the resource was successful.

8.8. Predefined Clean-up Actions¶

Some objects define standard clean-up actions to be undertaken when the object is no longer needed, regardless of whether or not the operation using the object succeeded or failed. Look at the following example, which tries to open a file and print its contents to the screen.

The problem with this code is that it leaves the file open for an indeterminate amount of time after this part of the code has finished executing. This is not an issue in simple scripts, but can be a problem for larger applications. The with statement allows objects like files to be used in a way that ensures they are always cleaned up promptly and correctly.

After the statement is executed, the file f is always closed, even if a problem was encountered while processing the lines. Objects which, like files, provide predefined clean-up actions will indicate this in their documentation.

8.9. Raising and Handling Multiple Unrelated Exceptions¶

There are situations where it is necessary to report several exceptions that have occurred. This is often the case in concurrency frameworks, when several tasks may have failed in parallel, but there are also other use cases where it is desirable to continue execution and collect multiple errors rather than raise the first exception.

The builtin ExceptionGroup wraps a list of exception instances so that they can be raised together. It is an exception itself, so it can be caught like any other exception.

By using except* instead of except , we can selectively handle only the exceptions in the group that match a certain type. In the following example, which shows a nested exception group, each except* clause extracts from the group exceptions of a certain type while letting all other exceptions propagate to other clauses and eventually to be reraised.

Note that the exceptions nested in an exception group must be instances, not types. This is because in practice the exceptions would typically be ones that have already been raised and caught by the program, along the following pattern:

8.10. Enriching Exceptions with Notes¶

When an exception is created in order to be raised, it is usually initialized with information that describes the error that has occurred. There are cases where it is useful to add information after the exception was caught. For this purpose, exceptions have a method add_note(note) that accepts a string and adds it to the exception’s notes list. The standard traceback rendering includes all notes, in the order they were added, after the exception.

For example, when collecting exceptions into an exception group, we may want to add context information for the individual errors. In the following each exception in the group has a note indicating when this error has occurred.

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