# V2014. Don't use terminating functions in library code.

This diagnostic rule was added at users' request. It is fairly ad-hoc and was designed for checking library code.

There are functions that terminate or may terminate program execution. Using them in your program is not a good practice but it is still legitimate since you, as the author of the program, know what result you want to achieve and what you are doing.

But you cannot use such functions in libraries! You never know where and how a library will be used, and it will be bad if the library terminates the program, causing the user to lose their data. If an error occurs, libraries should return an error status or throw an exception but never terminate the program.

Consider the following example:

    char *CharMallocFoo(size_t length)
    {
      char *result = (char*)malloc(length);
      if (!result)
        abort();
      return result;
    }

The 'CharMallocFoo' function will terminate execution if the attempt to allocate dynamic memory fails. As a way out, have the function return a null pointer for the library user to handle it.

This diagnostic is classified as:

CERT-ERR50-CPP