Dealing with Unhandled Exceptions

The purpose of this code is to illustrate how to handle an error, log the error to an output file, and then utilize the information in that file to see what really went wrong. Our test driver simply allows the user to enter several options from the command line and then passes them to a selector function that decides what to do based on that input. If the input is within range, it is processed. Otherwise, an exception object is built indicating what problem occurred and where. In this case, our error object will show all times in which the user entered a value outside the valid range. To do this, we use the ExceptionClass class, shown at 1. This class simply holds the error information, and allows the application to retrieve it. It also provides a reporting function to format the information in a

user readable way and to print it out. The second class, the ExceptionCatcher (shown at 2) just takes the information from the ExceptionClass object and prints it to the file specified in its constructor. Note that when an error occurs, it is propagated up to the main program, and caught at 3.

3. Save the source code in your code editor and then close the editor application.

4. Compile the application, using your favorite compiler on your favorite operating system.

5. Run the application in the console window.

If you have done everything right, you should see the following output from the application:

$ ./a.exe 1 2 3

You selected the second option Properly processed option 2

Exception reported in file ch53.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option

Exception reported in file ch53.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option

Note that the filename shown will vary depending on the program name you have chosen and the operating system you are working on.

In addition, you will have a file in your file system called errors.log. This file should contain the following entries in it:

$ cat errors.log Startup [errors.log]

Exception reported in file ch53.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option

Exception reported in file ch53.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option Shutdown

The output above indicates that there were errors detected in the program, which is to be expected because we gave the input invalid values. For the values that were understood, the message Properly processed option followed by the option number is displayed. For all other values, an exception is generated and the error Invalid Option is displayed.

Dealing with Unhandled Exceptions

Exception handling is a good thing, but sometimes an exception type pops up that you were not expecting. This is particularly problematic when you’re working with third-party libraries that either change over time or poorly document the exception types they throw. There is obviously nothing you can do about an exception type that you know nothing about — but you can at least stop your program from behaving badly when one is thrown.

The following steps show you an example of an exception that isn’t handled properly (a divide- by-zero error) and how you can use the built-in

set_terminate function to deal with it before it can lead to memory leaks and the like in your application. The set_terminate function defines a userimplemented function that will be called before the program exits. This function can be used to de-allocate any allocated blocks of memory or to close any open files or to do any other last minute handling that needs to be done to make your program shut down cleanly.

1.

2.

In the code editor of your choice, reopen the source file to hold the code for the technique.

In this example, the file is named ch53.cpp, although you can use whatever you choose.

Add the code from Listing 53-2 into your file.

Better yet, copy the code from the source file on this book’s companion Web site.

Also, remember to add a call to func2 in your main function so that we can look at the output of the program. After you do this, you will see that when the func2 function is invoked, it causes a divide-by-zero error (shown at 4

in Listing 53-2), which would normally crash the program without freeing the allocated gAllocatedBuffer memory block back to the operating system. Instead, we check for the error, throw an exception that is caught by the

compiler-generated code, and then call the termination function.

Note that we are throwing an exception that contains a character string, but catching only the exceptions of type ExceptionClass. The two will not match — which means the code for catching the exception will be bypassed.

3. Save the source code in your code editor and then close the editor application.

4. Compile the application, using your favorite compiler on your favorite operating system.

5. Run the application in the console window.

If you have done everything right, you should see the following output from the application:

$ ./a.exe 1 2 3

You selected the second option Properly processed option 2

Exception reported in file ch6_9.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option

Exception reported in file ch6_9.cpp at line 138

Invalid Option

term_func() was called by terminate().

Note that the term_func was called because an unhandled exception was generated by the code and never caught by the application code. If we did not install our own termination function, the program would simply exit and you would never see the term_func function call in the output.

Re-throwing Exceptions

One of the most annoying things about traditional error handling in C and C++ is that it forces you to lose a lot of lower-level information. For example, if you call a function to read a record, which in turn calls a function to move to the record in the file, which in turn calls a function to seek to the offset in the file (which causes an error), some potentially useful lower-level information (the fact that the offset was invalid) is lost at the top level. All you know is that the function to read a record failed, and possibly that it failed in the move routine. You still have to sit down with a debugger and step all the way down into the lowest-level functionality to see what really happened in the code. We can fix this by chaining errors from the lowest level to the uppermost level of an application. This chaining effect is accomplished by rethrowing exceptions.

Exception handling is a sure way to make sure that an error is handled in an application. If you design your application (from the ground up) to use exception handling, you save time later on by simplifying the debugging and maintenance phase of the system.

With exception handling, however, you can pass the information up the chain so the highest-level function can report all the data for a given error from the bottom level to the top.

In order to pass information from a lower level of the application to a higher one, you must catch exceptions, append to them and rethrow them. In the following list, I show you exactly how you do that, from generating the initial exception to catching it and adding to it to pass it to a higher level.

LISTING 53-3: PASSING EXCEPTIONS TO A HIGHER LEVEL

int read_file( long offset ) throw(string)

{

if ( offset < 0 || offset >= 100 )

throw string(“read_file: Invalid offset”); return 0;

}

int read_record( long record ) throw(string)

{

if ( record < 0 || record > 10 )

throw string(“read_record: invalid record number”); long offset = record * 10;

try

{

read_file( offset );

}

catch ( string msg )

{

string sMsg = “record_record: unable to go to offset\n”; sMsg += msg;

throw sMsg;

}

return 0;

}

5

6

In this example, we first catch an error at the

but the fact that the read_record function fails trying to read the data is added and the error is then rethrown, as shown at 6. The error is then caught at a higher level, in the func3 function (as shown at 7), and the results are displayed for the user.

3. In the main function, modify the code to call our new function, adding a call to func3 wherever you would like in the code, as follows:

//func2();

func3(10);

cout << “Func3 [3]” << endl; func3(20);

Note that the func2 call has been commented out, because it exits the program. This is easy to overlook; if your program never hits the func3 calls, it’s probably because you forgot to comment out this line.

4. Save the source code as a file in your code editor and then close the editor application.

5. Compile the application using your favorite compiler on your favorite operating system.

6. Run the application in the console window.

Save Time By

Understanding the limitations of return codes for handling errors

Combining return codes with exception handling to catch errors

Interpreting the output

Failing to handle errors is the single biggest reason for program failure — and that’s what creates the need for debugging and maintenance. If you eliminate the source of failures, you will give yourself

more time for developing better classes of applications and better features for your users. In this technique, I show you how to combine return codes with exception handling to avoid these failures.

In C++, methods and functions can return a status code that says whether the function succeeded, failed, or was left in some in-between state. For example, we might have a function that returns a status code indicating where the method is in processing data. The status code returned may look something like this:

int get_status(void)

{

switch ( current_status )

{

case NotProcessing: return –1;

case InProcessing: return 1;

case ProcessingComplete: return 0;

}

return –99;

}

Now, in this example, if the function returns a value of –99, obviously something very bad is going on — because we have no idea what state the object might have reached. Normally, if the status code were –99, we would want to stop processing immediately — and possibly exit the program. Unfortunately, there is no way for the developer of the function to force the developer using the function to check the return status code to make sure that they know something has gone wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to ensure that the programmer looked at the return code to see if it was invalid or not?

As it turns out, you can make sure that the developer checked the return codes. By using the following steps, you can force the return code to be checked; if the code isn’t checked, you can throw an exception. This is really the best of all possible worlds. Exception handling is a very sure way to force the developer to handle errors, but it also has a large overhead in terms of processing speed and CPU usage. Return codes, on the other hand, have low overhead, but you can’t really be sure that the developer will ever look at them. By combining the two approaches, you can be absolutely sure that errors are handled, which eliminates most of the run-time problems that crop up for end-users. There

is some overhead involved here, due to the exceptionhandling addition, but that overhead is mitigated by the fact that the exceptions will not be thrown if the error is properly checked.

1. In the code editor of your choice, create a new file to hold the code for the technique.

In this example, the file is named ch54.cpp, although you can use whatever you choose. This file will contain the source code for our classes.

2. Type the code from Listing 54-1 into your file.

Better yet, copy the code from the source file on this book’s companion Web site.

LISTING 54-1: THE RETURN CODE CLASS

#include <iostream> #include <string>

using namespace std;

template < class T > class RetValue

{

T _value;

bool _checked; public:

RetValue( void )

{

_checked = false;

}

RetValue( const T& t )

{

_value = t; _checked = false;

}

RetValue( const RetValue& aCopy )

{

_value = aCopy._value; _checked = false;

}

virtual ~RetValue(void)

{

if ( !_checked )

throw “Error: Return value not checked!!”;

1

2

3

}

string operator=( const string& msg )

{

_message = msg; return _message;

}

bool operator==( const MyReturnValue& aValue )

{

return _message == aValue._message;

}

bool operator<( const MyReturnValue& aValue )

{

return _message < aValue._message;

}

};

int main()

{

try

{

if ( !func( 34 )) printf(“Success!!\n”);

if ( func(35) & 2 ) printf(“Error 35\n”);

RetValue<int> t1 = 5; int x = 5;

int y = 3;

printf(“5 == 5? %s\n”, t1 == x ? “Yes” : “No” ); printf(“5 == 3? %s\n”, t1 == y ? “Yes” : “No” ); int iVal = t1;

printf(“Calling func2\n”); func2(34);

}

catch ( ... )

{

printf(“Exception!\n”);

}

try

{

RetValue<MyReturnValue> rv1 = MyReturnValue(“This is a test”); MyReturnValue rv = rv1;

string s = rv.Message();

printf(“Return Value: %s\n”, s.c_str() );

}

catch ( ... )

{

printf(“Exception in MyReturnValue\n”);

}

return 0;

}

4

5

6

The base class here, RetValue, implements a templated return code class that can accept any sort of data to use as the “real” return code for functions and methods. This code is stored in the class as a member variable, as shown at 1. Below that is another member variable called checked, which is used to see whether or not the return code has ever been compared to anything. (See 2.) The user can trigger this by comparing the value of the return code using any of the standard boolean operators (such as equal, not equal, less than, greater than, and so forth). After any of these operators is used, the return code knows that the developer using the return code has checked it in some way, and allows the program to continue. If the return code object goes out of scope without the error being checked, an exception will be thrown, as shown at 3. Because the class is templated, you can store anything you want in the class member data. We illustrate this by creating our own class, called MyReturnValue and returning it from a function.

3. Save the source code in your code editor and then close the editor application.

4. Compile the application, using your favorite compiler on your favorite operating system.

5. Run the application in the console window.

If you have done everything right, you should see the following output from the application:

$ ./a.exe Error 35

5 == 5? Yes

5 == 3? No Calling func2 Exception!

Return Value: This is a test

The output from this little test program shows that when we check an error, such as the not (!) operator comparison at 4 or the logical and (&) operator

at 5, there is no exception generated by the code. However, if a function that returns a RetValue

template object, such as func2, is called, as shown at 6, and the return value is not checked, there will be an exception generated.

As you can see, if the user does not choose to check a return value, the destructor for the class throws an exception when the object goes out of scope. This forces the application developer to deal with the problem, one way or the other. If the developer does not handle the exception, it terminates the program. If the developer does handle the exception, he will immediately realize where the return code was not handled.

What’s especially handy about this technique is that it also illustrates how you can override virtually every possible comparison operation for an object (such as the operator== shown at 7). By checking the various operations, we know whether the user did something like this:

if ( method_with_return_code() == BadReturn)

{

}

instead of something like this:

int myRet = method_with_return_code();

In the first case, the user is actually checking to see if the value was equal to something. In the second case, they are assigning the value to another variable that might never be checked. By looking at how the user accesses our return value, we can know whether they really checked the return code or not. This is where the overloaded operators come in; we set the checked flag in the overloaded operator and therefore we know whether the result was really looked at.

In addition, you have to worry about things like passing return codes up the chain from low-level methods to higher level ones. If the user makes a copy of the object to add a result or check the

current result, we want to know about it. They might then pass a copy of the object to a higher level calling routine. The copy constructor for the class is a bit different from others you may have seen or coded; it does not simply assign all of the member variables to be the same as the object it copies. Instead, it copies the value of the return code, and then makes sure that the flag indicating that the return value was checked is reset to unchecked,

because otherwise the user could simply copy the object into another return code and never look at the “real” status value.

Make sure that the errors you return to the user are as descriptive as possible, including as much information as you can. After all, you want your users to be able to actually do something about the trouble.

Save Time By

Using wildcard characters to search

Implementing a class that uses wildcard characters

Testing your wildcard class

If you have ever searched for files on a computer, you have probably used wildcards. Wildcards, in this sense, are characters used in search strings that stand not for themselves but for a broad range of charac-

ters. The idea of finding all of the files that match a given pattern is rather common in the computer world. So is the idea of searching files for strings that match wildcard patterns. For example, if you must find a file but can’t quite recall the name of that file — all you remember is that it began with the word convert or conversion or something similar — using a wildcard would be a great solution. Searching for the word convert only pulls up files that began with that specific word. Searching for conv*, on the other hand, gives you a much broader selection of files. The asterisk (*) wildcard character represents any group of zero or more characters. This means the resulting list from your search would include files that began with conv and then ended in any group of zero or more characters, such as

Convert

Conversion

Conversation

and the like.

Because they match zero or more characters, asterisks are useful wildcards, but they have their limitations. Using the asterisk, the pattern A*B matches AB, AbasdhB, and AbB. It does not match ABC nor AajhaBajksjB.

Wildcards represent a powerful capability that finds all the words that match a given root. Even better, wildcards also allow you to match words when you aren’t quite sure of the spelling. For example, what if you’re looking for the word conscious, but you can’t recall how to spell it — does it have an s in the middle or not? Wildcards allow you to search for the term anyway; you just search for con?cious. The question mark (?) wildcard represents any single character (or none at all); the pattern A?B