Forcing thrown exceptions to core dump without stack unwinding?

["Andy Glew" <glew@cs.wisc.edu>]

I'm using GCC 2.95.


Q: is there a way of forcing thrown exceptions to core dump
at the site of the exception - so that I can get a useful core dump
I can look at in a debugger?


Instead, what seems to be happening is that the exceptions cause
stack unwinding, are eventually uncaught, and cause a terminate
way up on high.  For whatever reason, I can get no useful stack
backtrace when I look at the core dump in a debugger.


My program may run for many days before the core dump (or not).
It is impractical to run them in a debugger set to break at the first
exception. Since the exceptions seem to be arising in library functions
I have not written, it is impractical to change the code to optionally
not throw.


(As currently written, there is no issue distinguishing between caught
and uncaught exceptions, since I have no exception handling.
In any case, the biggest use I have for catching exceptions is to elaborate
an error message - e.g. to say "new ran out of memory"
and then add layers of context "allocating a foobar_t"
"reading the persistemt object store bar" ...
I.e. so I won't care very much, for now, if all exceptions immediately
cause a coredump without doing any stack unwiding.)


I like the concept of exceptions, but I am afraid that I have found that
program debuggability has declined significantly since I started using them.


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