Re: [boost] Why does boost::thread::thread_start_function have catch(...)? (Win32)

From: Anthony Williams (anthony_w.geo_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-05-08 04:58:16

"James Talbut" <James.Talbut_at_[hidden]> writes:

> By calling std::terminate in the catch handler we lose the JIT debugger
> - and thus information about what the exception is that we haven't
> caught.
> Without the catch the process is still going to be killed, so what's the
> benefit of having that?

It's not specified in either the pthreads docs or the Windows docs what
happens if the thread function leaks an exception, since these are C
APIs. Depending on the compiler/platform a leaked exception in a thread may
either just terminate the thread, may terminate the whole process, or may
cause undefined behaviour. I know that some platforms don't support exceptions
in C stack frames, and will throw a wobbly.

By catching the exception and calling terminate(), the thread library makes it
explicit that this is an error.

Anthony
-- 
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