Exceptions#

GNU Objective-C provides exception support built into the language, as in the following example:

@try {
  ...
     @throw expr;
  ...
}
@catch (AnObjCClass *exc) {
  ...
    @throw expr;
  ...
    @throw;
  ...
}
@catch (AnotherClass *exc) {
  ...
}
@catch (id allOthers) {
  ...
}
@finally {
  ...
    @throw expr;
  ...
}

The @throw statement may appear anywhere in an Objective-C or Objective-C++ program; when used inside of a @catch block, the @throw may appear without an argument (as shown above), in which case the object caught by the @catch will be rethrown.

Note that only (pointers to) Objective-C objects may be thrown and caught using this scheme. When an object is thrown, it will be caught by the nearest @catch clause capable of handling objects of that type, analogously to how catch blocks work in C++ and Java. A @catch(id ...) clause (as shown above) may also be provided to catch any and all Objective-C exceptions not caught by previous @catch clauses (if any).

The @finally clause, if present, will be executed upon exit from the immediately preceding @try ... @catch section. This will happen regardless of whether any exceptions are thrown, caught or rethrown inside the @try ... @catch section, analogously to the behavior of the finally clause in Java.

There are several caveats to using the new exception mechanism:

  • The -fobjc-exceptions command line option must be used when compiling Objective-C files that use exceptions.

  • With the GNU runtime, exceptions are always implemented as ‘native’ exceptions and it is recommended that the -fexceptions and -shared-libgcc options are used when linking.

  • With the NeXT runtime, although currently designed to be binary compatible with NS_HANDLER -style idioms provided by the NSException class, the new exceptions can only be used on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and later systems, due to additional functionality needed in the NeXT Objective-C runtime.

  • As mentioned above, the new exceptions do not support handling types other than Objective-C objects. Furthermore, when used from Objective-C++, the Objective-C exception model does not interoperate with C++ exceptions at this time. This means you cannot @throw an exception from Objective-C and catch it in C++, or vice versa (i.e., throw ... @catch).