Re: [boost] Proposed Boost Assert -- once again

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-14 17:18:08

"Fernando Cacciola" <fernando_cacciola_at_[hidden]> writes:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Dimov" <pdimov_at_[hidden]>
> To: "Boost mailing list" <boost_at_[hidden]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 1:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [boost] Proposed Boost Assert -- once again
>
>
>> - there is no explicit support for throwing exceptions, and no standard
>> exception class is defined. (Although it is trivial to define a handler
> that
>> throws.) This is intentional. I don't believe that we, at Boost, want to
>> encourage this particular programming practice (assertions that throw.)
>>
> AFAIK, the differences between abort and throw are two-fold.
>
> On one hand, there are platform/compiler-dependent differences.
> Some enviroments (mostly Unix-like) don't allow you to get context
> information at the point of the throw, but, OTOH, supply a core-dump in the
> case of abort(). On these enviroments, abort() is clearly superior.
> Other enviroments (Windows) do allow you to get context information at the
> point of the throw and do not supply a *textual* core-dump for post-morten
> debugging (although you can use JIT). On this enviroment, throw is clearly
> superior.

Strong disagreement!  Regular exception handling constructs can
interfere with your ability to do post-mortem debugging if you assert
by throwing an exception. That makes asm { int 3 } or the equivalent
(which is what most of the built-in asserts do) much better on Windows
for assertions. Regular exception-handling constructs can also
interfere with asm{int 3}, but fortunately it's fairly easy to prevent
that in most cases. See libs/python/test/module_tail.cpp for the
trick.

-- 
                       David Abrahams
   dave_at_[hidden] * http://www.boost-consulting.com
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