Equivalent of segfault on Windows/MSVC?

Question

On Linux, the following code:

long* p = (long*)reinterpret_cast(0x634963963496034) // random memory address
std::cout << *p;

will likely cause a read of memory that hasn't been allocated, and the program will raise a SIGSEGV signal. Otherwise known as a segfault. (An action can be attached via sigaction(2)).

Is there an equivalent mechanism on Windows / MSVC ?

What will the above code do on Windows? Is there any way to trap this memory access violation, and run a user-provided function?

user_12149471 · Answer

On Windows, when catching the exception using Structured Exception Handling, the macro GetExceptionCode() will return EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION.

It is also possible to use C++ exception handling to catch SEH exceptions, as described here.

user_1131467 · Answer

What I was looking for was SetUnhandledExceptionFilter. SetUnhandledExceptionFilter on Windows is equivalent to sigaction on Linux for this use case.

Equivalent of segfault on Windows/MSVC?

2 Answers