C++ Exception-Handling Tricks for Linux

By Sachin O. Agrawal
2005-04-12

Retaining exception source information

In C++, whenever an exception is caught within a handler, the information about the source of the exception is lost. The exact source of the exception could provide a lot of vital information to better handle it, or the information could be appended to the error log for postmortem.

To deal with this, you can generate a stack trace in the constructor of the exception object during the throw exception statement. ExceptionTracer is a class that demonstrates this behavior.

Listing 1. Generating a stack trace in the exception object constructor

// Sample Program:

 // Compiler: gcc 3.2.3 20030502

 // Linux: Red Hat



 #include 

 #include 



 #include 

 #include 



 using namespace std;



 /////////////////////////////////////////////



 class ExceptionTracer

 {

 public:

     ExceptionTracer()

     {

         void * array[25];

         int nSize = backtrace(array, 25);

         char ** symbols = backtrace_symbols(array, nSize);



         for (int i = 0; i < nSize; i++)

         {

             cout << symbols[i] << endl;

         }



         free(symbols);

     }

 };

Tutorial Pages:
» Four Techniques for Dealing with Built-in Language Limitations
» Retaining exception source information
» Managing Signals
» Managing Exceptions in Constructors and Destructors
» Handling Exceptions in Multi-Threaded Programs
» Conclusion
» Resources

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks

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