Exceptional C or C with Exceptions

C does not have exception handling facilities. Errors are handled by examining the value returned by each function and signals (conditions reported to the program) are handled by using library functions. These approaches lead to ad hoc error-handling techniques and can make programs hard to understand. Exceptional C, a superset of C, provides exception handling facilities. Exceptional C integrates the two techniques used by C programmers (i.e., status values and signals) to handle errors into one unified exception handling mechanism. In this paper, I review exception handling models, specify the criteria used for designing the exception handling facilities in Exceptional C, and then describe these facilities. I also illustrate the use of the exception handling facilities with examples.