Question

Is it possible to terminate software execution without skipping calls to destructors? For instance, in the code below, the destructor for test will never be called because of the exit(1) statement.

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
using namespace std;

class A{
public:
    A(){cout << "Constructed.\n";}
    ~A(){cout << "Destroyed.\n";}
};

void func()
{
    //Assuming something went wrong:
    exit(1);  
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    A test;
    func();
    return 0;
}

What I need, is a way to end the program (from within func()) that calls all necessary destructors before terminating. So far I’ve been handling this through func() return value, as in:

bool func()
{
    //Assuming something went wrong:
    return false;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    A test;
    if( !func() )return 1;
    return 0;
}

The problem with this method is that it quickly becomes very annoying (and code bloating) to manage once you need to apply it to a series of nested functions.

Is there a way of achieving the same results of the second example (proper destructor calls) with a syntax similar to the first example (call exit(1) wherever you are)?

Answer 1

Throw an exception, catch it in main and return.

This relies on nothing else catching your exception without rethrowing it.