question about constructors and exceptions

assume the following conditions:

a pointer was declared and initialized to NULL before attempting to create an object with new.
the constructor of the object throws an exception.

according to standard C++, is the pointer guaranteed to be NULL (no memory was allocated) after throwing the exception? GCC behaves in such a way, but I'm wondering if it's a standard behavior or if it's just implementation specific.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elkvis

according to standard C++, is the pointer guaranteed to be NULL (no memory was allocated) after throwing the exception?

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Yes, since the assignment never happens as the exception propagates before it can happen. (Assuming that you are assigning the result to the pointer.)

Note that the fact that the pointer remains a null pointer has nothing to do with whether memory is allocated or not. A poorly written constructor could allocate memory then throw an exception while failing to have the memory deallocated.

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Originally Posted by laserlight

Note that the fact that the pointer remains a null pointer has nothing to do with whether memory is allocated or not. A poorly written constructor could allocate memory then throw an exception while failing to have the memory deallocated.

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I was simply referring to the new that was explicitly called to create the object, and not anything invisible to the programmer inside the constructor, so that answers my question.

Thank you.

Quote:

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Note that the fact that the pointer remains a null pointer has nothing to do with whether memory is allocated or not. A poorly written constructor could allocate memory then throw an exception while failing to have the memory deallocated.

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Which, IMO, is one good place to use auto_ptr since they will be cleaned up automatically. Of course any boost pointer would be as well but I guess auto_ptr does have a couple of good uses.