The GNU C library uses DWARF2 unwinding for pthread cancellation these days, so that both C++ exceptions and pthread cancellation cleanup handlers get called through a common call frame unwinding process which invokes destructors for automatic objects as necessary along the way. However, as far as I can tell there is still no standard that specifies the interaction between (POSIX) threads and C++, and presumably an application wishing to be portable should assume that throwing exceptions out of cancellation cleanup contexts is just as undefined as calling The GNU C library uses DWARF2 unwinding for pth