detecting arithmetic overflows - Compiler specific flags

[Karthik Kumar]

Hi,
   I have already posted the question to the gnu gcc n.g , but then 
found this n.g. and thought this question would be more appropriate 
here.  My apologies in case you find this one repeated.

   I am writing this application that needs a lot of arithmetic
calculations. I was wondering if the GNU C++ compiler specifies any way 
of detecting arithmetic overflows. ( some extensions or flags or some 
options).

   I was looking at overflow_error class provided by stdexcept library 
in C++. That does not seem to be raised automatically.

#include <iostream>
#include <stdexcept>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    try {
       short a = -10000;
       short b = a * 8;
    } catch ( overflow_error & r ) {
       // Oop !! No, arithmetic exception is not caught here.
    }
}

How would I handle similar situations ?

- Karthik.