kern/99979: Get Ready for Kernel Module in C++

[Kamal R. Prasad]

Im sorry I didn't understand you. setjmp() stores a few register contents
[notably ip] in a jmpbuf -which are restored after a longjmp(). How is the
try/catch mechanism more efficient than a setjmp()/longjmp() in terms of
space/time complexity?

thanks
-kamal


On 7/12/06, Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg at britannica.bec.de> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 06:33:09PM +0530, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
> > On 7/12/06, Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg at britannica.bec.de> wrote:
> >
> > >On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 11:37:52PM +0200, Attilio Rao wrote:
> > >> Even if I have no proof-of-concepts (so maybe somebody can show that
> > >> this is not fair), if we have setjmp/longjmp in the kernel we can
> have
> > >> a correct exception handling mechanism without not great problems.
> > >
> > >ROFL. Sorry, but using setjmp/longjmp is one of the worst possible
> > >implementation of exceptions since it is very expensive for the hot
> > >path, where you don't expect exceptions. They are called "exception"
> for
> > >a reason.
> >
> >
> > so how is exception handling in C++ more efficient than
> setjmp()/longjmp()
> > -in either paths?
>
> The common implementations are based on two assumptions:
> - try {} is used often through out the tree and nested
> - exceptions are raised seldomly.
> This means that the desire to catch an exception should be cheap and the
> implementation optimised for that.
>
> What happens is that the compiler creates a table which allows automatic
> stack unwinding and matching of the instruction pointers. The former is
> necessary to handle frame pointer vs. frame pointer-less stack frames,
> the latter is used to determine where an exception should be cought.
>
> Consider:
> void bar()
> {
>        throw "foo";
> }
>
> void foo()
> {
>        try {
>                bar();
>        } catch(...) {
>                cerr << "error";
>        }
> }
>
> (don't try that, I haven't written C++ for ages)
>
> The compiler creates:
> - an entry for the range of bar to annotate that it doesn't have use a
> frame pointer
> - an entry for foo, with the same annotation
> - the address when bar is called in foo (or the address directly
> following) to annotate that it should jump to catch, when an exception
> is raised.
>
> When an exception is raised, it looks at the current instruction pointer
> and begins unwinding the stack until a catch is found. This can be
> relatively cheap compared to longjmp, since the register content does
> not have to be restored. It does not add any slowdown, as long as
> exceptions are not raised.
>
> Joerg
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