Using exception in g++

Question

Getting compiler error in the below code which is throwing std::exception in g++ 4.8.2 on linux. Any suggestion why this error is coming will be very helpful.

#include <iostream>
#include <stdexcept>

void function()
{
     std::exception e((char*)"mmmm");
     throw e;
}


int main(int argc, const char* arg[]) {

    try {
        function();
    }
    catch(const std::exception& e) {
        e.what();
    }

    return 0;
}

error:

$ g++ t.cpp
t.cpp: In function ‘void function()’:
t.cpp:6:33: error: no matching function for call to ‘std::exception::exception(char*)’
   std::exception e((char*)"mmmm");
                                 ^
t.cpp:6:33: note: candidates are:
In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.8/ios:39:0,
                 from /usr/include/c++/4.8/ostream:38,
                 from /usr/include/c++/4.8/iostream:39,
                 from t.cpp:1:
/usr/include/c++/4.8/exception:63:5: note: std::exception::exception()
     exception() _GLIBCXX_USE_NOEXCEPT { }
     ^
/usr/include/c++/4.8/exception:63:5: note:   candidate expects 0 arguments, 1 provided
/usr/include/c++/4.8/exception:60:9: note: std::exception::exception(const std::exception&)
   class exception
         ^
/usr/include/c++/4.8/exception:60:9: note:   no known conversion for argument 1 from ‘char*’ to ‘const std::exception&’

EDIT 1

But code is compiling and working well in Visual Studio 2010 compiler.

_EXCEPTION_INLINE __CLR_OR_THIS_CALL exception::exception()
    : _Mywhat(NULL), _Mydofree(false) { }

_EXCEPTION_INLINE __CLR_OR_THIS_CALL exception::exception(const char * const & _What)
    : _Mywhat(NULL), _Mydofree(false)
    {
    _Copy_str(_What);
    }

_EXCEPTION_INLINE __CLR_OR_THIS_CALL exception::exception(const char * const & _What, int)
    : _Mywhat(_What), _Mydofree(false) { }

_EXCEPTION_INLINE __CLR_OR_THIS_CALL exception::exception(const exception& _That)
    : _Mywhat(NULL), _Mydofree(false)

What the C++ standard says about this?

Answer 1

std::exception does not have a constructor that takes a std::string or a char*. Maybe you'd like to use std::runtime_error?

Answer 2

no matching function for call to ... means that you are trying to call a function that doesn't exist. std::exception has no constructor that takes a char*, or anything that can be converted from a char*. It only has a default constructor, and a copy constructor.

Answer 3

As already pointed out in other answers, the constructor for std::exception takes no arguments.
Your code compiles in MSVC because

exception(const char* const &message)
exception(const char* const &message, int)

are Microsoft extension to the C++ Standard Library (see Remarks here exception Class)