Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++, 2nd Ed Contents | Prev | Next

Error handling in C

In most of the examples in this book, assert( ) was used as it was intended: for debugging during development with code that could be disabled with #define NDEBUG for the shipping product. Runtime error checking uses the require.h functions developed in Chapter XX. These were a convenient way to say, “There’s a problem here you’ll probably want to handle with some more sophisticated code, but you don’t need to be distracted by it in this example.” The require.h functions may be enough for small programs, but for complicated products you may need to write more sophisticated error-handling code.

Error handling is quite straightforward in situations where you check some condition and you know exactly what to do because you have all the necessary information in that context. Of course, you just handle the error at that point. These are ordinary errors and not the subject of this chapter.

The problem occurs when you don’t have enough information in that context, and you need to pass the error information into a larger context where that information does exist. There are three typical approaches in C to handle this situation.

  1. Return error information from the function or, if the return value cannot be used this way, set a global error condition flag. (Standard C provides errno
and perror( ) to support this.) As mentioned before, the programmer may simply ignore the error information because tedious and obfuscating error checking must occur with each function call. In addition, returning from a function that hits an exceptional condition may not make sense.

  1. Use the little-known Standard C library signal-handling system, implemented with the signal( 
) function (to determine what happens when the event occurs) and raise( ) (to generate an event). Again, this has high coupling because it requires the user of any library that generates signals to understand and install the appropriate signal-handling mechanism; also in large projects the signal numbers from different libraries may clash with each other.

  1. Use the nonlocal got
o functions in the Standard C library: setjmp( ) and longjmp( ). With setjmp( ) you save a known good state in the program, and if you get into trouble, longjmp( ) will restore that state. Again, there is high coupling between the place where the state is stored and the place where the error occurs.

When considering error-handling schemes with C++, there’s an additional very critical problem: The C techniques of signals and setjmp/longjmp do not call destructors, so objects aren’t properly cleaned up. This makes it virtually impossible to effectively recover from an exceptional condition because you’ll always leave objects behind that haven’t been cleaned up and that can no longer be accessed. The following example demonstrates this with setjmp/longjmp: 

//: C23:Nonlocal.cpp
// setjmp() & longjmp()
#include <iostream>
#include <csetjmp>
using namespace std;

class Rainbow {
public:
  Rainbow() { cout << "Rainbow()" << endl; }
  ~Rainbow() { cout << "~Rainbow()" << endl; }
};

jmp_buf kansas;

void oz() {
  Rainbow rb;
  for(int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    cout << "there's no place like home\n";
  longjmp(kansas, 47);
}

int main() {
  if(setjmp(kansas) == 0) {
    cout << "tornado, witch, munchkins...\n";
    oz();
  } else {
    cout << "Auntie Em! "
         << "I had the strangest dream..."
         << endl;
  }
} ///:~

setjmp( ) is an odd function because if you call it directly, it stores all the relevant information about the current processor state in the jmp_buf and returns zero. In that case it has the behavior of an ordinary function. However, if you call longjmp( ) using the same jmp_buf, it’s as if you’re returning from setjmp( ) again – you pop right out the back end of the setjmp( ). This time, the value returned is the second argument to longjmp( ), so you can detect that you’re actually coming back from a longjmp( ). You can imagine that with many different jmp_bufs, you could pop around to many different places in the program. The difference between a local goto (with a label) and this nonlocal goto is that you can go anywhere with setjmp/longjmp (with some restrictions not discussed here).

The problem with C++ is that longjmp( ) doesn’t respect objects; in particular it doesn’t call destructors when it jumps out of a scope. [68] Destructor calls are essential, so this approach won’t work with C++.

[68] You may be surprised when you run the example – some C++ compilers have extended longjmp( ) to clean up objects on the stack. This is nonportable behavior.

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