Can the C++ `new` operator ever throw an exception in real life?

Question

Can the new operator throw an exception in real life?

And if so, do I have any options for handling such an exception apart from killing my application?

Answer 1

Yes, new can and will throw if allocation fails. This can happen if you run out of memory or you try to allocate a block of memory too large.

You can catch the std::bad_alloc exception and handle it appropriately. Sometimes this makes sense, other times (read: most of the time) it doesn't. If, for example, you were trying to allocate a huge buffer but could work with less space, you could try allocating successively smaller blocks.