Question

The C++ standard guarantees that std::swap will throw no exception. However, what if an object to swap throws an exception during swapping? Next, how should the caller find an exception has happened? and what measures should the caller take?

PS: It is very common that a constructor throws an exception.

struct A
{
    A(const A&)
    {
        throw 1;
    }

    A& operator =(const A&)
    {
        throw 2;
        return *this;
    }
};

int main()
{
    A a1, a2;
    std::swap(a1, a2); // An exception happened, but the caller doesn't know.
    // How to do here ???
}

Answer 1

The C++ standard guarantees that std::swap will throw no exception.

No, it doesn’t. See 20.2.2 or the reference. There are two noexcept specifications for the two std::swap overloads:

template<class T> void swap(T& a, T& b)
noexcept(noexcept(
    std::is_nothrow_move_constructible<T>::value &&
    std::is_nothrow_move_assignable<T>::value
))

template<class T, size_t N>
void swap(T (&a)[N], T (&b)[N])    
noexcept(noexcept(swap(*a, *b)))

When these conditions aren’t satisfied, std::swap can throw and you can catch it.

---

In case of the class you have presented, the predicates std::is_nothrow_move_constructible and std::is_nothrow_move_assignable are false, so the instantiation std::swap<A> doesn’t have the no-throw guarantee. It’s perfectly legal to catch exceptions from this swap.