Difference between a C++ exception and Structured Exception

by

You actually have three mechanisms:

  • C++ exceptions, implemented by the compiler (try/catch)
  • Structured Exception Handling (SEH), provided by Windows (__try / __except)
  • MFC exception macros (TRY, CATCH – built on top of SEH / C++ exceptions – see also TheUndeadFish’s comment)

C++ exceptions usually guarantee automatic cleanup during stack unwinding (i.e. destructors of local objects run), the other mechanisms don’t.

C++ exceptions only occur when they are explicitly thrown. Structured Exceptions may occur for many operations, e.g. due to undefined behavior, passing invalid pointers to APIs, unmounting the backing store of a memory mapped file, and many more.

MFC did introduce the exception macros to support exceptions even if compilers didn’t implement them.

More Related Contents:

  1. Possibilities to quit a function
  2. C++ display stack trace on exception
  3. When should I really use noexcept?
  4. Why will std::sort crash if the comparison function is not as operator
  5. How to know the exact line of code where an exception has been caused?
  6. GDB complaining about missing raise.c
  7. Throw keyword in function’s signature
  8. C++ catching all exceptions
  9. LPCSTR, LPCTSTR and LPTSTR
  10. Who deletes the memory allocated during a “new” operation which has exception in constructor?
  11. Difference between C++03 throw() specifier C++11 noexcept
  12. Why catch an exception as reference-to-const?
  13. c++ exception : throwing std::string
  14. How do you convert CString and std::string std::wstring to each other?
  15. Windows/C++: Is it possible to find the line of code where exception was thrown having “Exception Offset”
  16. What should I know about Structured Exceptions (SEH) in C++?
  17. Why are C++ STL iostreams not “exception friendly”?
  18. boost thread throwing exception “thread_resource_error: resource temporarily unavailable”
  19. Why destructor is not called on exception?
  20. Determining exception type after the exception is caught?
  21. Creating HBITMAP from memory buffer
  22. Should I inherit from std::exception?
  23. Does throw inside a catch ellipsis (…) rethrow the original error in C++?
  24. Why vector access operators are not specified as noexcept?
  25. Dynamic menu using mfc
  26. Measuring exception handling overhead in C++
  27. How to Run Only One Instance of Application
  28. Windows Media Foundation recording audio
  29. New (std::nothrow) vs. New within a try/catch block
  30. Why is a segmentation fault not recoverable?

Leave a Comment