Is is possible in C++ to throw nothing?

Question

Under exceptional circumstances, I want my program to stop processing, output an error to std::cerr, clean up, and exit.

However, calling exit() will not call all the destructors of any objects that have been constructed. I would like to have the destructors called nicely, so I wrapped all the code in a try-catch block, something like this:

int main(int argc, char** argv){
    try {
        bool something_is_not_right = false;
        /* lots of variables declared here */
        /* some code that might set something_is_not_right to true goes here */
        if(something_is_not_right){
            std::cerr << "something is not right!!!" << std::endl;
            throw '\0';  // dummy unused variable for throwing.
        }
    }
    catch (...) {}
    return 0;
}

In this way, I get guaranteed destruction of all my variables. But I can't seem to find a way to get C++ to throw nothing. throw; has a special meaning in C++; it isn't throwing nothing.

Is there a way to throw nothing?

Answer 1

No

It's not possible to throw nothing. You need to throw something. While you may have seen people use the throw keyword without anything, this just means they are re-throwing the currently handled exception.