title: Avoid std::bad_alloc. new should return a NULL pointer
body: <p>I port a middle-sized application from C to C++. It doesn't deal anywhere with exceptions, and that shouldn't change.</p>
  
  <p>My (wrong!) understanding of C++ was (until I learned it the hard way yesterday) that the (default) new operator returns a NULL pointer in case of an allocation problem. However, that was only true until 1993 (or so). Nowadays, it throws a std::bad_alloc exception.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Is it possible to return to the old behavior without rewriting everything to using std::nothrow on every single call?</strong></p>