When is it right for a constructor to throw an exception?

Question

When is it right for a constructor to throw an exception? (Or in the case of Objective C: when is it right for an init\'er to return nil?)

It seems to me that a cons

Answer 1

Using factories or factory methods for all object creation, you can avoid invalid objects without throwing exceptions from constructors. The creation method should return the requested object if it's able to create one, or null if it's not. You lose a little bit of flexibility in handling construction errors in the user of a class, because returning null doesn't tell you what went wrong in the object creation. But it also avoids adding the complexity of multiple exception handlers every time you request an object, and the risk of catching exceptions you shouldn't handle.