exception - How to catch divide-by-zero error in Visual Studio 2008 C++?

Question

How can I catch a divide-by-zero error (and not other errors; and to be able to access exception information) in Visual Studio 2008 C++?

I tried this:

try {
  int j=0;
  int i= 1/j;//actually, we call a DLL here, which has divide-by-zero
} catch(std::exception& e){
  printf("%s %s
", e.what()); 
}  catch(...){
  printf("generic exception");
}

But this goes to the generic ... catch block. I understand that the MS-specific __try may be useful here, but I'd prefer standard C++, and in any case I have destructors which prevent the use of __try.

CLARIFICATION: The code above is simplified for discussion purposes. Actually, the divide-by-zero is a bug which occurs deep in a third-party DLL for which I do not have the source code. The error depends on the parameter (a handle to a complex structure) which I pass to the library, but not in any obvious way. So, I want to be able to recover gracefully.

Answer 1

C++ does not handle divide-by-zero as an exception, per-se.

Quoting Stroustrup:

"low-level events, such as arithmetic overflows and divide by zero, are assumed to be handled by a dedicated lower-level mechanism rather than by exceptions. This enables C++ to match the behaviour of other languages when it comes to arithmetic. It also avoids the problems that occur on heavily pipelined architectures where events such as divide by zero are asynchronous."

"The Design and Evolution of C++" (Addison Wesley, 1994)

In any case, exceptions are never a replacement for proper precondition handling.