c++ - Can a constructor return a NULL value?

Question

I know constructors don't "return" anything but for instance if I call CMyClass *object = new CMyClass() is there any way to make object to be NULL if the constructor fails? In my case I have some images that have to be loaded and if the file reading fails I'd like it to return null. Is there any way to do that?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I agree with everyone else that you should use exceptions, but if you do really need to use NULL for some reason, make the constructor private and use a factory method:

static CMyClass* CMyClass::create();

This means you can't construct instances normally though, and you can't allocate them on the stack anymore, which is a pretty big downside.