Re: Sizeof struct containing T?

From:
Jiang <goo.mail01@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:15:29 CST
Message-ID:
<1189650982.724829.184790@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 13, 1:59 am, Daniel Kr?gler <daniel.krueg...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

On 11 Sep., 12:22, Jiang <goo.mai...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sep 11, 12:32 am, Martin Bonner <martinfro...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

sizeof(U) >= sizeof(T), but it reallistically is possible for
sizeof(U) > sizeof(T).


If T can be any type then it is possible that sizeof(U)
will be even smaller than sizeof(T).


No, that is impossible, v.i.


I am not sure whether I explained my point clearly or not,
I will do it again.

#include <iostream>

struct t
{
     char a[32];

};

typedef t& T;


OK, T is a reference type, but this is *not* the same as T.


Quite true. Isn't it?

But here I meant the T *is* a reference type, and the
type be referenced , say struct t, is not really important.

struct U
{
     T b; // ignore its initialization ...
};


U contains now a *reference* to a t.


Yes, that's the point.

If a class U holds a reference type T as its member,
then sizeof(U) can not report the actual size of
the object referenced by T.

Note also, that it is
impossible to omit the initialisation of a variable of reference type.


True.

I removed the constructor to make layout of U similar as OP.
However, IMHO, add the constructor back won't break my above
words, well, if we stay in a more general context.

int main()
{
     std::cout << "sizeof(T):" << sizeof(T) << std::endl;
     std::cout << "sizeof(U):" << sizeof(U) << std::endl;

}

$ ./aout
sizeof(T):32
sizeof(U):4


This is expected and does not disprove Martin's assertion.


So what is Martin's assertion?

Actually in my previous post I was not quite sure
about that and I added the precondition for my
words. That is, here the member T can be any type.

There exists a special rule in C++ for sizeof in namely [expr.sizeof]/2 :

"When applied to a reference or a reference type, the result is the size
of the referenced type[..]"


Yes, a good, old, solid rule from the very beginning...

But as I explained just now, for a type U that contains a reference
member, nowhere in the standard says the size of the referenced
type will be counted and added to the sizeof(U) .

which effectively guarantees:

static_assert(sizeof(X) == sizeof(X&), "sizeof is immune to
references");


Here I failed to see your point.

You are comparing sizeof(X) with sizeof(X&), and in my
previous post, I compared sizeof(T) with sizeof(U), where
T is a member of U.

It's not specified by the standard, but typical implementations will use
an X* to implement X& as data member of a class, which nicely explains
the outcome of sizeof(U).


The 4 bytes output of sizeof(U) does not surprise me at all.
I added the output log just for saving compile&test time for
others.

Here,

1. If we want to simulate reference using pointer, we
      should use " const X * " .

2. Since reference itself is not an object, the standard
      even does not guarantee storage for reference.

3. The actual sizeof(U) is not an issue here.

BTW, as I said many times in this group, using sizeof()
for non-PODs is just asking for trouble. My previous
example was intended to prove it.

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