It seems that current_exception mishandles standard exceptions. I noted two problems: 1) Some standard exceptions are not handled at all. This includes std::runtime_error and its derived (std::overflow_error, std::range_error, std::underflow_error), std::domain_error (handled by general std::logic_error), std::length_error (handled by general std::logic_error) and std::ios_base::failure (handled by general std::exception). Why is it so? 2) Non-standard exceptions derived from standard exceptions are sliced by current_exception. It detects those types by throwing and caching and thus will catch also derived types (like null_pointer : public std::invalid_argument). But during construction of internal structures the standard exception type is used and thus copy construction slices the original exception object. If typeid was used instead of throwing/catching (or dynamic_cast) to detect the type current_exception could at least detect that is will slice the original object and use a different type so it would not pretend everything is OK. Adam Badura