Question

In Xcode I can create a breakpoint to catch all exceptions (exception breakpoint). However this breakpoint will also fire in a try-catch situation.

I’m using third party libraries, so the try-catch situation is a fact, not an option.

Is there a way to only handle the uncaught exceptions, instead of all exceptions?

Answer 1

You can put a top-level try/catch at your threads’ entries.

You may also be interested in NSSetUncaughtExceptionHandler.

Normally, top level handlers are of little utility in production (you’re really not attempting to recover from a problem you aren’t prepared to handle, but it may be useful for last words or breakpoints). Ideally, you would guard your exits from those library interfaces with a try/catch if and only if you could handle the the exception. Either that, or nothrow as a quick debugging utility during development.

If you’re trying to catch Cocoa exceptions — just let it die and file bugs to whoever thought Cocoa exceptions were supposed to be recoverable.