What are the different levels of exception safety in programming?

What are the different levels of exception safety in programming?

In programming, exception safety refers to the guarantees a function provides when an exception is thrown. The main levels are: 1. No guarantee: The state may be corrupted. 2. Basic guarantee: The state remains valid, but not necessarily unchanged. 3. Strong guarantee: The state is unchanged if an exception occurs. 4. Nothrow guarantee: No exceptions will be thrown.

Can you explain the strong guarantee in more detail?

Sure! The strong guarantee ensures that if an exception is thrown during the execution of a function, the program's state remains unchanged. This means that the function either completes successfully, leaving the state as it was, or it fails without making any modifications.

What are some examples of functions that provide the nothrow guarantee?

Functions that provide the nothrow guarantee typically include operations that are designed to avoid exceptions, such as certain memory management functions or operations on types that are guaranteed to not throw exceptions, like certain standard library containers in C++.

How can I implement exception safety in my code?

To implement exception safety, you can use techniques like RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization), smart pointers, and careful design of your functions to ensure they adhere to one of the exception safety levels. Always consider the potential for exceptions and design your code to handle them gracefully.