C++ catching all exceptions

Obediah Stane picture Obediah Stane · Nov 25, 2008 · Viewed 378.8k times · Source

Is there a c++ equivalent of Java's

try {
    ...
}
catch (Throwable t) {
    ...
}

I am trying to debug Java/jni code that calls native windows functions and the virtual machine keeps crashing. The native code appears fine in unit testing and only seems to crash when called through jni. A generic exception catching mechanism would prove extremely useful.

Answer

Greg D picture Greg D · Nov 25, 2008
try{
    // ...
} catch (...) {
    // ...
}

will catch all C++ exceptions, but it should be considered bad design. You can use c++11's new current_exception mechanism, but if you don't have the ability to use c++11 (legacy code systems requiring a rewrite), then you have no named exception pointer to use to get a message or name. You may want to add separate catch clauses for the various exceptions you can catch, and only catch everything at the bottom to record an unexpected exception. E.g.:

try{
    // ...
} catch (const std::exception& ex) {
    // ...
} catch (const std::string& ex) {
    // ...
} catch (...) {
    // ...
}