Why can't I catch a luabind::error exception when my lua code throws an error?

Question

When you call a LUA function from c++ and there is a runtime error LuaBind throws a luabind::error exception that you can catch and then read the stack to see what the error was. My debugger definitely catches this exception but when I let the debugger continue, instead of the exception being caught in my code the program immediately terminates.

The exception is thrown in "call_member.hpp" in the LuaBind include files from the destructor ~proxy_member_void_caller().

The problem occurs with simple test code. I am using Xcode 5 with LuaBind 0.9.1.

Answer 1

It turns out that it is bad practice to throw exceptions in destructors. With C++11 destructors are implicitly noexcept(true), so if an exception occurs the program terminates. LuaBind uses exceptions in destructors, so on my modern compiler the program terminated. Editing the method signature to:

~proxy_member_void_caller() noexcept(false) {}

allows you to catch exceptions from LuaBind in c++11.