Re: The C++ Language 4th edition - Subclassing vector for range checking.

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 16 Jul 2013 02:34:11 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<d27799f2-47e7-43d2-b6ad-b68ae98d640b@googlegroups.com>
On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 09:26:33 UTC+1, SG wrote:

On Sunday, July 14, 2013 3:26:45 AM UTC+2, mrile...@gmail.com wrote:

In The C++ Programing Language 4.4.1.2 Stroustrup says "... I often
use a simple range-checking adaption of vector:"

template<typename T>
class Vec : public std::vector<T> {
public:
    using vector<T>::vector;

    T & operator[](int i)
        {return vector<T>::at(i);}

    const T & operator[](int i) const
         {return vector<T>::at(i);}
};

I thought this was some what dangerous because if an user of the class
(Maybe not the person who wrote it) writes:

Vector<T> * vectorObject = new Vec<int>(100);
delete vectorObject;

Results in undefined behavior.

Did something change in C++11?


No. Using delete in this case still invokes undefined behaviour. You
can think of what Stroustrup is doing as a hack. It works as long as
you don't use delete in such a way.


And since you'd never allocate a vector dynamically anyway, any
delete of a vector would be undefined behavior, with or without
the derivation.

I find it a bit unfortunate that Stroustrup suggests something like
this. I find it unfortunate that he does not mention that at least two
popular C++ implementations (G++ and MSVC) provide extra debugging
features.


Perhaps they didn't provide it when he wrote the book.

Or perhaps he wanted an exception, rather than an abort. (In
production software, I normally want the abort, but he's
concerned here with a learning environment, I think.)

--
James

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