Should I inherit from std::exception?

c++ exception exception-handling
John M Gant picture John M Gant · Nov 3, 2009 · Viewed 33k times · Source

I've seen at least one reliable source (a C++ class I took) recommend that application-specific exception classes in C++ should inherit from std::exception. I'm not clear on the benefits of this approach.

In C# the reasons for inheriting from ApplicationException are clear: you get a handful of useful methods, properties and constructors and just have to add or override what you need. With std::exception it seems that all you get is a what() method to override, which you could just as well create yourself.

So what are the benefits, if any, of using std::exception as a base class for my application-specific exception class? Are there any good reasons not to inherit from std::exception?

Answer

Nikolai Fetissov picture Nikolai Fetissov · Nov 3, 2009

The main benefit is that code using your classes doesn't have to know exact type of what you throw at it, but can just catch the std::exception.

Edit: as Martin and others noted, you actually want to derive from one of the sub-classes of std::exception declared in <stdexcept> header.

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