Re: Surprising struct initialization

From:
Greg Herlihy <greghe@mac.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 3 Jul 2008 13:00:11 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<08b72203-79bf-4845-bf22-28df86bd4d21@z32g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 3, 9:05 am, Juha Nieminen <nos...@thanks.invalid> wrote:

struct Point { int x, y; };

struct Line
{
    Point endpoint[2];
    int weight;
};

Line createLine(int sx, int sy, int ex, int ey)
{
    Line l = { sx, sy, ex, ey, 1 };
    return l;
}

  Both gcc and Visual Studio 2005 compile that happily.

  My question would be: Is that *really* correct, or are both compilers
simply being lenient? What are the exact rules for the initialization
blocks of structs?


The compilers are not being lenient - multiple braces can be elided in
an aggregate initializer. Therefore, a program can replace this:

   Line l = {{{sx, sy}, {ex, ey}}, 1 };

with:

   Line l = {sx, sy, ex, ey, 1 };

as long as there are enough arguments to match the aggregate members.
Otherwise, the braces would be needed. For example:

    Line l = {{{sx, xy}}, 1}; // l.endpoint[1] is initialized to {0,
0}

I would leave the braces in an aggregate initializer (even when not
needed) just to make the code more readable.

Greg

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