Arizona State University (ASU) CSE100 Principles of Programming with C++ Midterm 1 Practice Exam

Exception handling in C++ is primarily designed to address runtime errors. These are errors that occur during the execution of a program, which can disrupt the normal flow of operations. When such errors arise, they can lead to system crashes or unexpected behavior, making it essential to have a way to manage them gracefully.

By using exception handling, programmers can anticipate potential problems, such as invalid input, memory allocation failures, or out-of-bounds access, and implement a strategy to catch and respond to these issues at runtime. This helps in maintaining program stability and allows developers to provide meaningful error messages or recovery options.

In contrast, compile time errors, syntax errors, and logical errors are issues that are typically identified through the compiling process or during the code review stage. Compile time errors are related to code that does not conform to the language rules, syntax errors involve mistakes in the program structure, and logical errors pertain to flaws in the algorithm that lead to incorrect results without crashing the program. Exception handling does not directly address these types of issues, which is why runtime errors are the focus of this feature in C++.