Cheat Engine

[Freiza]

Why we don't use simple if statement instead of Try catch block.. in c++ ?

[Dark Byte]

it's faster, if there are more than 2 states to compare against

[HomerSexual]

You can run code inside an if statement that will crash your program and make it end right there, the try catch block prevents this from happening

[Freiza]

@HomerSexual

[callmenuge]

[FLiNG]

I am using C# and I alway use if, else if statements, works fine so far.
But I just started programming a week ago, I don't know which is better, I feel easier to use if statement.

[atom0s]

There have been quiet a few debates about this over the past years with people doing performance checks and other comparisons to see which is better in the end.

Some reads:
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/exceptions.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/13.html
(Google for more if you wish.)

More info on try/catch/finally/throw:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6dekhbbc%28v=VS.100%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9xtt5hxz%28v=VS.100%29.aspx

Overall it depends on your application though, if something can be caught with a simple if/else, you should use it rather then going with exception handling since it is overkill and not really needed. Such as what you are showing, a simple if can handle it.

If there is dynamic data coming into play that can cause your statements to throw exceptions (access violations, casting issues, etc.) then using try/catch becomes for feasible. For code quality, using try/catch should only come into play in most sensitive areas. If your program has the ability to crash at a given point due to unknown incoming data, sometimes it is best to use a try/catch to be sure. But if you are doing simple compares, your program has close to no chance of crashing unless it blows up or has some other extreme anomaly happen.

Another decent use of try/catch is with finally to cleanup multiple objects. If you have a rather in-depth function; for example DLL injecting; that is going to initialize and use various objects that in the end you will need to cleanup, as well as cleanup on each fail of another call then these can become useful.

In DLL injection you can have upto:
- Find process
- Open handle (Handle needs to be closed now.)
- Allocate memory. (Memory should be cleaned up afterward.)
- Write memory. (Can fail and require object cleanup.)
- CreateRemoteThread call to load the dll. (Creates a thread handle, can also fail.)
- Get the thread exit code to determine if it loaded. (Can fail; requiring cleanup.)
- Calling any exports if required. (Can also fail requiring more cleanup.)

Something this in depth can make more readable code by using a try/catch/finally statement to cleanup all objects in the finally block. In this example as well, it is very dynamic and not guaranteed that every operation will succeed.

Pseudo example:

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

generally don't use exceptions as a form of flow control, use them for exceptional behavior. rarely a point if you know the outcome.