unhandled exception

Since unhandled exceptions generate errors by default, the throw() procedure can serve as a general purpose error flagging system.

It's a friggin' unhandled exception.

Trying to recover after an unhandled exception, or in this case an infinite loop, is an amateur mistake, and experienced developers understand why this is a terrible idea.

The reason Windows BSODs, Linux Kernel Panics, and applications get unhandled exceptions is to prevent further damage.

The dump of the process could be obtained automatically by the system (for example, when process has terminated due to an unhandled exception), or by a programmer-inserted instruction, or manually by the interactive user.

If the program fails to catch the exception (because for some reason the programmer never wrote the code to handle that particular exception), the exception makes it all the way to the top of all the layers, and the operating system recognizes it as an "unhandled exception."

CrashRpt intercepts unhandled exceptions, creates a crash minidump file, builds a crash descriptor in XML format, presents an interface to allow user to review the crash report, and finally it compresses and sends the crash report to the software support team.

He also wrote some very spiffy code that catches any unhandled exception on any copy of CityDesk running anywhere in the world, prevents the app from crashing, and pushes the exception info up to our FogBUGZ bug tracking database here in New York City.