Preferred coding style for error handling?

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Ian Goldby wrote:

> This is the technique I usually use. The only thing you have to watch is to 
> make sure that you tidy up properly just before each return. In extreme 
> cases, it's probably better to use goto (especially if undoing a non-existant 
> action is benign - unfortunately with malloc/free it's not):
> 
> if (!(ptr = malloc(...)))
>   return;
> if (CreateMutex(...))
> {
>   free(ptr);
>   return;
> }
> if (CreateEvent(...))
> {
>   free(ptr);
>   DeleteMutex(...);
>   return;
> }
>    etc.

Right -- in most cases (including malloc/free) initializing variables to a
known value (usually 0) solves such problems. If that does not work, you
can have a multi-stage exit, and just goto the right stage. But I agree
with you such cases are not very common. But for the cases where this
makes sense, I'd rather make good use of goto rather than make a complex
case even harder to understand just for the benefit of sticking to the
don't-use-goto dogma.

-- 
Dimi.