std::invalid_argument

Header: <stdexcept>

Defines a type of object to be thrown as exception. It reports errors that arise because an argument value has not been accepted.

# Declarations

class invalid_argument;

# Parameters

• what_arg: explanatory string
• other: another exception object to copy

# Return value

*this

# Notes

Because copying std::invalid_argument is not permitted to throw exceptions, this message is typically stored internally as a separately-allocated reference-counted string. This is also why there is no constructor taking std::string&&: it would have to copy the content anyway.

Before the resolution of LWG issue 254, the non-copy constructor can only accept std::string. It makes dynamic allocation mandatory in order to construct a std::string object.

After the resolution of LWG issue 471, a derived standard exception class must have a publicly accessible copy constructor. It can be implicitly defined as long as the explanatory strings obtained by what() are the same for the original object and the copied object.

# Example

#include <bitset>
#include <iostream>
#include <stdexcept>
#include <string>
 
int main()
{
    try
    {
        std::bitset<4>{"012"}; // Throws: only '0' or '1' expected
    }
    catch (std::invalid_argument const& ex)
    {
        std::cout << "#1: " << ex.what() << '\n';
    }
 
    try
    {
        [[maybe_unused]] int f = std::stoi("ABBA"); // Throws: no conversion
    }
    catch (std::invalid_argument const& ex)
    {
        std::cout << "#2: " << ex.what() << '\n';
    }
 
    try
    {
        [[maybe_unused]] float f = std::stof("(3.14)"); // Throws: no conversion
    }
    catch (std::invalid_argument const& ex)
    {
        std::cout << "#3: " << ex.what() << '\n';
    }
}

# Defect reports