Patent ID: 7685579

Claim:
A method of handling exceptions encountered during the translation of subject program code into target code, comprising: detecting the occurrence of an exception; selecting a level of subject context precision required for the detected exception from a plurality of possible levels of precision, wherein one of said possible levels of subject context precision is a precise subject register state including rectified subject registers and a precise program counter value; and invoking a signal handler to handle the detected exception using the selected level of precision, wherein the selected level of subject context precision comprises either: (a) a precise subject register state including the rectified subject registers and the precise program counter value; or (b) a level in which less than an entire subject processor state is passed to the signal handler, and wherein in case (b), the selected level of subject context precision that is passed to the signal handler comprises one or more of (i) a last known stack frame, (ii) no subject processor state and (iii) a precise program counter value.