Exception Safe Programming

[Tyler Knott]

Saaa wrote:
> That is exactly what I originally thought, but why then is that piece of 
> code a example of how to ...
> oh wait... if f=dofoo() fails, f is still unchanged and the correct thing to 
> do is to exit the function through an exception.
> never mind, but thanks :)

When an exception is thrown and not caught, the compiler unwinds the callstack until it finds a handler.  What this 
means is that if a function throws an exception then the program will look for the closest call inside a try block with 
a following catch block that will accept the type of the exception (or a type the exception is implicitly castable to). 
  So, for example:

import std.stdio;

class MsgClass
{
	this() { writefln("MsgClass constructed."); }
	~this() { writefln("MsgClass destructed."); }
}

class TestException : Exception
{
	this(char[] msg) { super(msg); }
}

void thrower()
{
	writefln("Throwing exception.");
	throw new TestException("This is an exception");
}

int inBetween()
{
	//Destructs after the exception because its scope is destroyed by the exception
	scope MsgClass i = new MsgClass();
	thrower();
	writefln("Returning 5..."); //Never prints
	return 5; //Function never returns
}

void main()
{
	int x;
	try
	{
		x = inBetween(); //x is never assigned
	}
	catch(Exception e)
	{
		writefln("Caught exception: ", e);
	}
	writefln("The value of x is: ", x); //x = 0
}

This code will output the following with thrower() called:

MsgClass constructed.
Throwing exception.
MsgClass destructed.
Caught exception: This is an exception
The value of x is: 0

And this without:

MsgClass constructed.
Returning 5...
MsgClass destructed.
The value of x is: 5