I can use two approaches for throwing an exception. The first approach is
CMyException myException; throw myException;
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CMyException* pMyException = new CMyException(); throw pMyException;
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As
far as I can figure out, the disadvantage of the first method is that
the object is first constructed on the stack and then copied again to
be passed from throw. The thing that I don't understand about the
second approach is, who is responsible for freeing the CMyException
object? MFC always uses the second approach, but none of the sample
code that shows catching MFC exceptions has code to free the exception
object. So, who's freeing it?
A
Good question. The answer may surprise you. But first, let me give you
the quick lowdown on exceptions, borrowed from Scott Meyers' excellent
book, More Effective C++ (Addison-Wesley, 1995), Item #13. There are three ways you can throw/catch exceptions: by pointer, by value, or by reference.
 If
you throw/catch by pointer, you must allocate the exception object to
throw, then delete it when you catch. This approach involves no extra
copying, but there's a problem. If the exception was thrown using
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static CMyException me(...); throw &me;
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your program will [insert bad turn of events here]
if the code that catches the exception tries to delete it. It may be
fairly unusual to throw a static exception object, but it can be useful
sometimes. The point is, there's no way the code that catches the
exception can know whether the object was allocated from the heap or
static memory, so there's no way for it to be absolutely sure whether
to delete it. And it goes without saying that you can't throw a stack
object using this method:
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CMyException me(...); throw &me;
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Everyone knows that a stack object no longer exists when control leaves the function containing it.
The second approach for throwing and catching exceptions is to throw/catch by value.
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// throw code CMyException me; throw me; // catch code catch (CException e) { // handle it }
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This
avoids the allocation/destruction problem since the object is passed on
the stack as a value, but at the cost of copying the object twice—once
when the exception is thrown, and again when the exception is caught.
You can avoid the first copy by writing
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which creates the CMyException directly on the return stack, but the second copy is still unavoidable.
Personally,
I think the copy issue is no big deal since exceptions are by
definition supposed to be, well, exceptional—that is, they don't happen
often. For most applications, the time required to copy a few bytes is,
to understate the case, insignificant. But there's a more serious
problem with catching by value: it's called the slicing problem. I'm
not talking about Ginsu knives, I'm talking about slicing objects.
In
the previous code, e is declared as type CException, so that's what you
get. Always. When the exception-throwing code throws a CMyException
(derived from CException), the code that catches the exception gets a
CException. The object loses all member data and functions added by
CMyException; this information is sliced off. In general, C++
polymorphism only works through a pointer to an object, not an object
itself. So in the case of MFC, if the code that catches the exception
attempts to call the virtual functions CException::GetErrorMessage or
ReportError, the compiler generates a call to
CExeption::GetErrorMessage, not
CMyException::GetErrorMessage—definitely not what you want.
The only way to fix this would be to declare e as CMyException.
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catch (CMyException e) { // handle it }
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But
this is obviously no solution; what happens when you introduce
CMyException2? You have to modify every place that catches exceptions
of this type, which rather defeats the whole purpose of polymorphism.
For this reason, throwing exceptions by value is exceptionally grody.
As
you may have guessed (you're so shrewd), I've saved the best option for
last: throw/catch by reference. Using references, you can still throw
the exception by value
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but now you use a reference to catch it:
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catch (CException& e) { // handle it }
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Instead
of copying the thrown object into a local variable, the compiler lets
the code catching the exception manipulate the stack copy directly.
There's no slicing problem. Throwing/catching exceptions by reference
has the best of all worlds: no extra copying, you don't have to worry
about who destroys the exception object (since it's always passed on
the stack), and polymorphism is preserved. So from a purely theoretical
perspective, references are the best way to do exceptions.
So
much for theory. Now let's enter the world of MFC. MFC has its own
exception mechanism that's based on C++, looks like C++, but isn't C++.
Here you find TRY, END_TRY, CATCH, CATCH_ALL, AND_CATCH, END_CATCH, and
other macros that resemble the C++ keywords.
Let's take a look at a vanilla TRY/CATCH sequence in MFC:
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TRY DoSomething(); CATCH (CMyException, e) HandleBadKarma(); END_CATCH
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How does the compiler expand this? Don't bother going to the header files; I'll show you right now.
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// TRY expands to: { AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK _afxExceptionLink; try { DoSomething(); // CATCH expands to: } catch (CMyException* e) { ASSERT_KINDOF(CMyException, e); _afxExceptionLink.m_pException = e; HandleBadKarma(); // END_CATCH expands to: } }
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The
first thing you'll notice is that MFC always catches exceptions by
pointer (and throws them that way too, naturally). But what's that
strange AFX_EXCEPTION_ LINK object, _afxExceptionLink? It's a little
object that holds a pointer to the exception. When MFC catches the
exception, it sets _afxExceptionLink.m_pException to point to the
caught exception. And, as you might have guessed, the destructor
AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK::~AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK deletes the object. It doesn't
do it directly, but calls another function, AfxTryCleanup:
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// called from ~AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK void AFXAPI AfxTryCleanup() { AFX_EXCEPTION_CONTEXT* pContext = AfxGetExceptionContext(); AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK* pLinkTop = pContext->m_pLinkTop; // delete current exception if (pLinkTop->m_pException != NULL) pLinkTop->m_pException->Delete(); // remove ourself from the top of the chain pContext->m_pLinkTop = pLinkTop->m_pLinkPrev; }
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The
linked list of AFX_EXCEPTION_LINKs forms a stack. One global
AFX_EXCEPTION_CONTEXT holds the pointer to the AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK on
the top of the stack (m_pLinkTop). The AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK constructor
adds itself to the stack; the destructor removes itself and deletes the
exception object by calling m_pException->Delete. The upshot is
this: MFC exceptions delete themselves as long as you use CATCH.
Contrary to what you might expect, CException::Delete is not a virtual
function; it's a normal member function that calls delete.
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void CException::Delete() { if (m_bAutoDelete > 0) delete this; }
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By
default, exceptions are auto-deleting; that is, m_bAutoDelete is TRUE.
If you don't want the catch code to delete your exception—for example,
if it's a static object as in the previous examples—you can change
m_bAutoDelete.
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static CMyException staticex();
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staticex.m_bAutoDelete = FALSE; throw &staticex;
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Now
CATCH code all over the world will not delete staticex. You can set
m_bAutoDelete for a class or for an individual object, but you're
forever locked into using the MFC CATCH, not the C++ catch. I won't
bother to explain all the varieties of CATCH_ALL, AND_CATCH,
THROW_LAST, and so on, since once you understand the idea of using
AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK, you can pretty well figure out how they work.
Why does MFC do all this magic? Mostly for historical reasons. The Microsoft
?
compiler was slow to support C++ exceptions using try/catch, so MFC
provided its roll-yer-own implementation using TRY/CATCH, which was
originally implemented using C setjmp/longjmp. For backward
compatibility, you can still use this implementation by #defining the
symbol _AFX_OLD_EXCEPTIONS before #including <afx.h>.
By
now I've answered your question. The MFC sample code doesn't delete the
exceptions because the TRY/CATCH code is so clever it generates code to
delete them for you. But if you're reading the source code for MFC
itself, you may be confused by code like this:
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TRY { DoSomething(); } CATCH_ALL(e) { // handle it DELETE_EXCEPTION(e); }
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What's
DELETE_EXCEPTION? I can't explain any better than the MFC source code
itself, which contains the following comment in stdafx.h: "MFC does not
rely on auto-delete semantics of the TRY/CATCH macros, therefore those
macros are mapped to something closer to the native C++ exception
handling mechanism when building MFC itself."
The
stdafx.h used to build MFC contains its own entirely different
definitions for TRY, CATCH, and so on; ones that map more or less
directly to try/catch (with some ASSERTs thrown in for good measure).
Since these internal TRY/CATCH implementations don't have the magic
delete code, DELETE_EXCEPTION is required to manually call
e->Delete.
So
there are three possible implementations of TRY/CATCH: the "normal"
implementation you get without doing anything (with all the magic
auto-delete stuff using AFX_EXCEPTION_LINK); the "old"
backward-compatible setjmp/longjmp implementation you get when you
#define _AFX_OLD_EXCEPTIONS; and the implementation MFC uses
internally, which requires DELETE_EXCEPTION to delete the exceptions.
If all this makes you want to throw up your hands and pull out your
hair, I can sympathize. It would be nice if the folks in Redmond
rationalized their exception handling to map TRY/CATCH directly to
try/catch, but I don't think it will happen since that might break lots
of existing code.
So
what should you do? If you call an MFC function that can throw an
exception, you have no choice but to try to catch it. If you have old
code that already uses TRY/CATCH, it probably works fine and you
shouldn't do anything. But if you're writing new code, I would avoid
TRY/CATCH entirely and stick with try/catch. Why? Three reasons: first,
try/catch produces smaller code than the MFC macros (no hidden local
objects with constructor/destructor calls); second, CATCH limits you to
catching CException-derived exceptions; and finally, it just plain
looks better to use real C++. TRY/CATCH was always a temporary kludge,
so the sooner you forget it, the better. The only catch is, if you use
try/catch, you have to remember to delete your exception object!
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try{ CallSomeMFCFunction(); } catch( CException*e) { // recover e->Delete();
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轉(zhuǎn)載自
Microsoft Systems Journal 1999