title: How to turn off exception handling?
body: <p>In the book More Effective C++ (Number 15), I read that code becomes significantly slower if exceptions are enabled, even if they are not used. In my opinion, exceptions are of limited use, and I try to avoid them, but this is another topic.</p>
  
  <p>I do not entirely understand his statement:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What does enabling/disabling exceptions mean? It it the difference between having zero or more than zero try/catch blocks? Is it a compiler flag? What happens if I use a DLL in which exceptions can occur?</li>
  <li>Suppose no exception is ever thrown:
  
  <ul>
  <li>Does the code become slower as a whole or are only the parts where the program enters/exits try/catch blocks become slower? According to the author, both is true.</li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>How can I compile without exceptions? Can I do this even if I have try/catch blocks? Can I do this if DLLs I use might throw exceptions?</li>
  </ol>