Question

I know that I shouldn’t throw exceptions from a destructor.

If my destructor calls a function that can throw an exception, is it OK if I catch it in the destructor and don’t throw it further? Or can it cause abort anyway and I shouldn’t call such functions from a destructor at all?

Answer 1

Yes, that’s legal. An exception must not escape from the destructor, but whatever happens inside the destructor, or in functions it calls, is up to you.

(Technically, an exception can escape from a destructor call as well. If that happens during stack unwinding because another exception was thrown, std::terminate is called. So it is well-defined by the standard, but it’s a really bad idea.)