throwing exceptions out of a destructor

Question

Most people say never throw an exception out of a destructor - doing so results in undefined behavior. Stroustrup makes the point that \"the vector destructor e

Answer 1

I currently follow the policy (that so many are saying) that classes shouldn't actively throw exceptions from their destructors but should instead provide a public "close" method to perform the operation that could fail...

...but I do believe destructors for container-type classes, like a vector, should not mask exceptions thrown from classes they contain. In this case, I actually use a "free/close" method that calls itself recursively. Yes, I said recursively. There's a method to this madness. Exception propagation relies on there being a stack: If a single exception occurs, then both the remaining destructors will still run and the pending exception will propagate once the routine returns, which is great. If multiple exceptions occur, then (depending on the compiler) either that first exception will propagate or the program will terminate, which is okay. If so many exceptions occur that the recursion overflows the stack then something is seriously wrong, and someone's going to find out about it, which is also okay. Personally, I err on the side of errors blowing up rather than being hidden, secret, and insidious.

The point is that the container remains neutral, and it's up to the contained classes to decide whether they behave or misbehave with regard to throwing exceptions from their destructors.