Re: [boost] 5 Observations - My experience with the boost libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] 5 Observations - My experience with the boost libraries
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-03-28 20:08:04

Tom Brinkman a écrit :
>> The prevailing view on projects that I have worked on is that
>> C++ exception handling should optional and not required.
> 
>>> Exceptions are a fact of C++ life.  You can't avoid them if for no other
> reason than std::bad_alloc, unless you don't allocate from the free store.
> 
> Not true, there are no-throw versions of std::new.
> 
> In any event, my point is that c++ exception handeling should be optional.
> Boost libraries need to be updated to reflect this.

The C++ standard library throws exceptions. You probably use it, as a 
lot of other C++ developers do, while claiming things like containers of 
types that don't throw exceptions don't throw exceptions, but yes, they 
do (since they call operator new, which throws, and have no other way of 
reporting errors anyway).

How can you expect Boost to be any different than the standard library? 
Even Qt recently left no-exception-make-believe-land when they realized 
it hurt them more than they anticipated, and now they have to reaudit 
everything to ensure exception-safety, because the code was never 
written with that in mind...

Exceptions are an all or nothing thing. You can't just make them 
optional or be exception-agnostic.
In all cases, all C++ code should be exception safe, unless you choose 
to restrict yourself to a dialect of C++ where exceptions do not exist, 
that is say C.