Re: About member variable initilization and default constructor issues

From:
 James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:27:40 -0000
Message-ID:
<1193822860.060943.322640@v3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 30, 4:49 pm, JosephLee <shoupe...@gmail.com> wrote:

In Inside C++ object Model, Lippman said there are four cases in which
compile will sythesize a default constructor to initialize the member
variables if the constructor is absent:


Note that Lippman is talking about the internals of a C++
compiler, not about the language specification. According to
the language specification, a default constructor is always
synthesized if there is no user defined constructor. The
conditions below define what the standard calls a "trivial"
constructor (or rather the inverse); if the constructor is
"trivial", it's a no-op, and internally, the compiler doesn't do
anything.

1. there is a virtual function;

2. virtual inheritance;

3.base class with explicit default constructor;

4.member object with explicit default constructor.


That should be member object or base class with non-trivial
constructor.

And of course, the compiler doesn't even consider synthesizing a
default constructor if you have declared any other constructor.

e.g.

class A {
public:
       int i;
       A* p;
}
int main()
{
      A a;
     if(a.i ==0 || a.p == 0) //do something
}

The behavior is undefined for the above case.


Yes.

If we modify class A to
have any one of the four characeristics, then the member variables
will be initialized in the default constructor sythesysized by the
compiler, as though
A():i(0),p(0){} is defined in the class.


No. The synthesized constructor doesn't initialize int's or
pointers.

But I try this in different compilers, and yield different
results. My question is : Is Lippman teaching ISO standard, or
compiler-dependent?


Well, he's talking about compiler internals, so it's definitely
implementation specific. But I'm rather surprised that he says
that the synthesized constructor will initialize the variables
above; the standard doesn't require it, and none of the
compilers on which Lippman has worked do it.

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James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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