Is it okay to manually throw an std::bad_alloc?

Question

I have this code..

 CEngineLayer::CEngineLayer(void)
 {
    // Incoming creation of layers. Wrapping all of this in a try/catch block is
    // not helpful if logging of errors will happen.

    logger = new (std::nothrow) CLogger(this);

    if(logger == 0)
    {
     std::bad_alloc exception;
     throw exception;
    }

    videoLayer = new (std::nothrow) CVideoLayer(this);

    if(videoLayer == 0)
    {
     logger->log("Unable to create the video layer!");

     std::bad_alloc exception;
     throw exception;
    }
 }

 IEngineLayer* createEngineLayer(void)
 {
    // Using std::nothrow would be a bad idea here as catching things thrown
    // from the constructor is needed.

    try
    {
     CEngineLayer* newLayer = new CEngineLayer;

     return (IEngineLayer*)newLayer;
    }
    catch(std::bad_alloc& exception)
    {
     // Couldn't allocate enough memory for the engine layer.
     return 0;
    }
 }

I've omitted most of the non-related information, but I think the picture is clear here.

Is it okay to manually throw an std::bad_alloc instead of try/catching all of the layer creations individually and logging before rethrowing bad_allocs?

Answer 1

You don't need to do that. You can use the parameterless form of the throw statement to catch the std::bad_alloc exception, log it, then rethrow it:

logger = new CLogger(this);
try {
    videoLayer = new CVideoLayer(this);
} catch (std::bad_alloc&) {
    logger->log("Not enough memory to create the video layer.");
    throw;
}

Or, if logger is not a smart pointer (which it should be):

logger = new CLogger(this);
try {
    videoLayer = new CVideoLayer(this);
} catch (std::bad_alloc&) {
    logger->log("Not enough memory to create the video layer.");
    delete logger;
    throw;
} catch (...) {
    delete logger;
    throw;
}