C++ catching all exceptions

Is there a c++ equivalent of Java's

try {
    ...
}
catch (Throwable t) {
    ...
}

I am trying to debug Java/jni code that calls native windows functions and the virtual machine keeps crashing. The native code appears fine in unit testing and only seems to crash when called through jni. A generic exception catching mechanism would prove extremely useful.

try{
    // ...
} catch (...) {
    // ...
}

will catch all C++ exceptions, but it should be considered bad design. You can use c++11's new current_exception mechanism, but if you don't have the ability to use c++11 (legacy code systems requiring a rewrite), then you have no named exception pointer to use to get a message or name. You may want to add separate catch clauses for the various exceptions you can catch, and only catch everything at the bottom to record an unexpected exception. E.g.:

try{
    // ...
} catch (const std::exception& ex) {
    // ...
} catch (const std::string& ex) {
    // ...
} catch (...) {
    // ...
}

Someone should add that one cannot catch "crashes" in C++ code. Those don't throw exceptions, but do anything they like. When you see a program crashing because of say a null-pointer dereference, it's doing undefined behavior. There is no std::null_pointer_exception. Trying to catch exceptions won't help there.

Just for the case someone is reading this thread and thinks he can get the cause of the program crashes. A Debugger like gdb should be used instead.

This is how you can reverse-engineer the exception type from within catch(...) should you need to (may be useful when catching unknown from a third party library) with GCC:

#include <iostream>

#include <exception>
#include <typeinfo>
#include <stdexcept>

int main()
{
    try {
        throw ...; // throw something
    }
    catch(...)
    {
        std::exception_ptr p = std::current_exception();
        std::clog <<(p ? p.__cxa_exception_type()->name() : "null") << std::endl;
    }
    return 1;
}

and if you can afford using Boost you can make your catch section even simpler (on the outside) and potentially cross-platform

catch (...)
{
    std::clog << boost::current_exception_diagnostic_information() << std::endl;
}

try {
   // ...
} catch (...) {
   // ...
}

Note that the ... inside the catch is a real ellipsis, ie. three dots.

However, because C++ exceptions are not necessarily subclasses of a base Exception class, there isn't any way to actually see the exception variable that is thrown when using this construct.

it is not possible (in C++) to catch all exceptions in a portable manner. This is because some exceptions are not exceptions in a C++ context. This includes things like division by zero errors and others. It is possible to hack about and thus get the ability to throw exceptions when these errors happen, but it's not easy to do and certainly not easy to get right in a portable manner.

If you want to catch all STL exceptions, you can do

try { ... } catch( const std::exception &e) { ... }

Which will allow you do use e.what(), which will return a const char*, which can tell you more about the exception itself. This is the construct that resembles the Java construct, you asked about, the most.

This will not help you if someone is stupid enough to throw an exception that does not inherit from std::exception.