Comment by dataflow

> Saying throw an exception and bubble up to main provides just about zero value. Might as well just call std::abort. Which is also something I would never do.

I'm sorry but this is where you're clearly wrong. The whole point is unwinding doesn't have to necessarily happen all the way to main(); there is a ton of value in doing this, and it is not at all equivalent to aborting. It lets someone in the call chain do something other than abort, or clean up stuff that they otherwise might not have a chance to. Like logging an error, telling the client there was an internal error, dumping additional information that wouldn't be useful in the successful case, and/or moving on to another task. All gracefully, without any intermediate functions having to care (aside from providing basic exception safety), and without having to throw your hands up and give up. Aborting without being asked is rather presumptuous and robs your callers of all opportunities to do anything about the problem you encountered.

People do this stuff and find it useful... you're effectively telling them all that they're doing something useless and they may as well just abort. That's... quite a claim.