Can the C++ `new` operator ever throw an exception in real life?

c++ exception new-operator out-of-memory
osgx picture osgx · Mar 23, 2010 · Viewed 38.4k times · Source

Can the new operator throw an exception in real life?

And if so, do I have any options for handling such an exception apart from killing my application?

Update:

Do any real-world, new-heavy applications check for failure and recover when there is no memory?

See also:

Answer

James McNellis picture James McNellis · Mar 23, 2010

Yes, new can and will throw if allocation fails. This can happen if you run out of memory or you try to allocate a block of memory too large.

You can catch the std::bad_alloc exception and handle it appropriately. Sometimes this makes sense, other times (read: most of the time) it doesn't. If, for example, you were trying to allocate a huge buffer but could work with less space, you could try allocating successively smaller blocks.

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