Re: copy constructor

From:
Alex Shulgin <alex.shulgin@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:05:28 CST
Message-ID:
<1182078194.272849.290560@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 17, 12:43 am, Irek Szczesniak <irek.szczesn...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi,

I need to count the number of objects that my class creates with the
copy constructor. Therefore I could create my own copy constructor
where I'll keep track of the number of created objects by increasing a
static integer variable. If I do this, then I would need to implement
what the default constructor does for me. Is there nonetheless some
way of using the default copy constructor, so I don't need to
implement it?


Sure, inherit your class from the copy counting class:

#include <iostream>
#include <ostream>

template< class T >
class copy_counter
{
public:
     copy_counter()
     {
     }

     copy_counter(copy_counter< T > const&)
     {
         ++copies;
     }

     static size_t copies;
};

template< class T > size_t copy_counter< T >::copies = 0;

class my_class
   : public copy_counter< my_class >
{
public:
     explicit my_class(std::string const& data = "")
       : data(data)
     {
     }

private:
     std::string data;
};

int
main()
{
     my_class obj1("obj1");
     my_class obj2(obj1);
     my_class obj3(obj2);

     std::cout << my_class::copies << " copies of my_class created" <<
std::endl;
}

$ ./a.out
2 copies of my_class created
$

The template hack allows you to count copies of objects of different
classes separately :-)

--
Regards,
Alex Shulgin

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