So I've just learned that C has no exceptions

Instead, they use some weird setjmp/longjmp shit.
Holy fuck, and some trolls here dare say that "C is a good language".

>>5
Nope. I wanted to use libpng and it uses setjmp.h heavily, that's how I learned about it in the first place.
And return values are no substitute because there are a million ways that a routine can crash before getting to the return statement.