Re: User defined conversion to builtin type gives l-value?

From:
Arne Mertz <news@arne-mertz.de>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:43:09 +0200
Message-ID:
<49e3416e$0$32676$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net>
James Kanze schrieb:

On Apr 12, 8:41 pm, Arne Mertz <n...@arne-mertz.de> wrote:

James Kanze schrieb:

In my case it is indeed a free function - it is the builtin
operator/=(double, double). The problem occurs with
dividable2_left<double, X>, which implements

double operator-(X const&, double const&) by converting the X
into double and applying /=


I'm not sure I understand. You can't overload /= for double,
double. The compiler won't even consider user defined overloads
in such cases.


Actually I don't try to overload operator/= for double, double. All
I have to do for the dividable2_left<double,X> is provide the
conversion from X to double.

I know that the mixed arithmetic templates <T,U> should be
declared base classes of T, not of U, but as T is double I
derive U from those templates to make the lookup possible. As
I said, the short form is only used when BOOST_HAS_NRVO and
BOOST_FORCE_SYMMETRIC_OPERATORS are not #defined so at the
moment I make sure that one of the two is defined:


The source is such a confused mess of conditional compilations
that I can't make heads or tails of it. What I think is that
you have two variants (after expansion of all the macros):

    T
    operator/( T lhs, U const& rhs )
    {
        return lhs /= rhs ;
    }

and

    T
    operator/( T const& lhs, U const& rhs )
    {
        T nrv( lhs ) ;
        nrv /= rhs ;
        return nrv ;
    }


these are not the implementations of the operator I have problems
with. its not T op/(T, U), but T op/(U, T).
The two versions of the BOOST_OPERATOR2_LEFT macros are

#if defined(BOOST_HAS_NRVO) || \
     defined(BOOST_FORCE_SYMMETRIC_OPERATORS)

friend T operator OP( const U& lhs, const T& rhs )
       { T nrv( lhs ); nrv OP##= rhs; return nrv; }

#else

friend T operator OP( const U& lhs, const T& rhs )
{ return T( lhs ) OP##= rhs; }

#endif

the latter is the version I am having problems with, if T is double.

Both of these should work with T == double. (The first isn't
what I'd consider good coding style, but apparently, it's an
optimization for compilers which don't support NRVO.)


 > The case you're interested in is more complex, however, since
 > they do an implicit conversion on the value to the left of the
 > /=. There's no way this can work for a built-in type.
 >

Yes, for the op(T,U) operators thats OK, but for the op(U,T)
apparently it is not, because the U has to be converted into T,
resulting in the problems I described. And note the comment to the
non-nrvo version:

// [...] Note that the implementation of
// BOOST_OPERATOR2_LEFT(NAME) only looks cool, but doesn't provide
// optimization opportunities to the compiler :)

[snip]

But what puzzles me is that if the left template argument is a
user defined type with a free operator/=, the problem does not
occur:

class Y {};

Y& operator/= (Y& lhs, Y const&) { return lhs; }

struct X : public boost::dividable2_left<Y, X>
{
   operator Y() const {return Y();}
};

//injected by boost:
//Y boost::operator/ (Y vonst& lhs, X const& rhs)
//{ return X(lhs) /= rhs; }
//

int main()
{
   X x;
   Y y;
   Y e = x / y;

}


Yes it does.

In the beginning of the thread, you mentioned VC++, I think.
I'm not sure, but I seem to recall hearing that VC++ doesn't
enforce the rule about not binding a temporary to a non-const
reference. In which case, the above will work (but the built-in
operator won't, because the rules for lvalues are enforced).


Ah okay, so it's a non-conformity to the standard that makes it work
on MSVC?

greets
A

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