Quote:
That doesn't make any sense, given that try-except is a Windows specific construct.

I figured he meant try/catch. try/except is niether C++ (which using try/catch) nor Windows SEH-specific (which uses __try/__except). So I guess it could either way, but either way, it won't work.

the try/catch block can't work either ... because it is platform specific code. You can't CALL a function that your program doesn't know about, and when it is compiled for each platform it will only be linked to the libraries for that platform. So all fundamentally incompatible distinctions are made at compile time (using the defines). Once you know the top-level platform at compile time, you can invoke the platform specific run-time functions from their.