[bediger]

Yes. How can he possibly say that "exceptions are faster" without such timings? C++ style, unwind-the-stack-and-call-destructor exceptions must really have a high run-time cost when an exception occurs. Also, his instruction count misses the instructions that occur at run-time handling an exception. Even when an exception doesn't occur, it isn't obvious that some run-time code doesn't get excuted.

[SoftwareMaven]

But you have to unwind the stack either way. With exceptions, the exception handling does it. With error checking, you do it every time you type "if (something() == -1) return -1;"