Yes, that's not exception safe. Writing this error safe without exceptions requires nearly identical discipline. How much non-exception code have you seen check

Yes, that's not exception safe. Writing this error safe without exceptions requires nearly identical discipline. How much non-exception code have you seen checking every return value and restoring state? There are alternative more safe ways of writing this, but none have to do with whether exceptions were used. This is a case where the developer needs to know that all update calls may not be completed. This may be a high or low probability, and may have fatal or no consequence. How many programs can handle a hard drive crashing or CPU glitch? Writing good error handling requires a lot more than removing exceptions, and often is not worth the cost. No software handles every error condition.