Re: C++0X explicitly defaulted copy constructors

From:
"Johannes Schaub (litb)" <schaub-johannes@web.de>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:36:39 +0100
Message-ID:
<ian4mu$fi$02$1@news.t-online.com>
Marc wrote:

See below for the code. A variadic argument U&&... matches a
copy-from-lvalue better than the implicit copy constructors, so I need
to declare a copy constructor from lvalue. And since its existence
prevents the implicit declaration of the other two versions (from const
ref and from rvalue), I need to declare those 2 as well. Now I don't
want anything fancy for those and I am fine with whatever the compiler
can generate by default, so I default the three copy/move constructors.


Note that you can employ a trick here. Your template will be a better match
than the copy constructor only for U = "A&" and "A const". For that, you can
make the class declaration not declare such a constructor, but introduce it
later on immediately.

struct A {
    A()=default;
    template<class...U> A(U&&...){
            std::cout << "NOOOOO!\n";
    }
    // note: non-template functions are preferred!
    inline A(A&, int); // does not prevent implicit A(A const&);
    inline A(A const&&, int); // does not prevent A(A&&);
};
A::A(A&, int = 0) {
 /* copy */
}
A::A(A const&&, int = 0) {
 /* copy */
}

This is more work than necessary, though, and I haven't tested it.
Note that this way too, your class becomes non-trivial (it's trivial after
the class was defined, but becomes non-trivial after the copy constructors
are defined later on).

You could use SFINAE for this, although I admit it is ugly to catch the
exact case when U... has sizeof...(U) == 1 and such. The following should
suffice, I believe (insert typename as necessary... - and I haven't tested
it)

struct A {
    A()=default;
    template<class U,
      class = enable_if<
        !is_same<remove_reference<U>::type const, A const>::value>
      ::type>
    A(U&&) {
            std::cout << "YEEEES!\n";
    }
    
    template<class...U, class = bool[sizeof...(U) > 1]>
    A(U&&...){
            std::cout << "YEEEES!\n";
    }
};

This way, your class will still be trivially copyable - as opposed to the
out-of-line defaulting workaround.

Note that if issue report http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_active.html#1080 is rejected, then you don't
need any precautions: A(U&&) will never be used then inplace of a move/copy
constructor. But I doubt it.

The reason GCC rejects your code apparently has something to do with that
the Standard marks first-declaration-explicitly-defaulted functions
potentially trivial (in your case, it actually is trivial). The Standard
requires that such an explicit-defaulting must match the parameter types
that the implicitly-declared copy constructor/move constructor would have.

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