Call Stack Dump + Exceptions Question.

Check out the ImageHlp.dll stuff. I implemented a call stack dump file based on: http://www.mvps.org/win32/misc/stackwalk.html.

Here''s one example of why excpeptions are necessary and sometimes preferred:

In my code, I hardly ever create classes that have "init()" routines. In my opinion, that''s a cause for error for a programmer using my libraries (including me!). So, I follow the idiom of "instantiation is initialization" which means that all initialization of the members in my class is done during the construction of the class.

Now, if something goes wrong during the initialization, I sure can''t return an error code from the constructor, so I throw exceptions instead. If the failure of the construction of a class is okay, then I catch the exceptions and continue. If it''s a big failure that can''t be managed, the exception propagates out until someone else catches it or the program terminates.

I actually believe that exceptions, when used properly, make for robust code. They force fatal errors to be managed, where as a return code for a fatal error could be ignored causing the program to be harder to diagnose when it possibly crashes later on because of the ignored return code.

However, I don''t use just exceptions. There are times and places for both exceptions and return codes, and a good programmer knows when to use one and not the other.

The C++ exception model is brain-dead. While there are lots of useful things an exception handling framework could do (like *TRACE THE STACK*) The C++ one doesn''t do jack. While other systems usually offer more functionality they are lacking as well. A good thing to have is a failure to compile if the exception gaurantees are not met. Some systems will automatically build a call-chain, which is nice but only half the job.

If you want your exception handling routines to do something useful, you need to use the platform specific API. You can actually save the state of a crashed program and debug it at your leisure on your development machine. In kernel land, they call these core dumps.