Win32 System Services: The Heart of Windows® 98 and Windows® 2000

21.5. Structured Exception Handling

Compatibility Note: Visual C++ provides a better exception-handling mechanism. You will use structured exception handling (SEH) in your programs in two different ways. First, SEH is Windows' communication channel when hardware and software exceptions occur. A typical exception is an invalid memory access via a pointer. SEH is also useful because you can raise exceptions in your own code and catch and use them just like system exceptions. Both techniques are demonstrated in this section.

Let's say that you create and run a program that offends the computer. For example, you set a pointer p to NULL and then say

*p=5;

When you execute this program, it will die with an application error. What is really happening ...