Re: static_cast, cast operator, and constructors.

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:53:12 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<69d0a5f3-414d-471c-af2b-367fb2fab235@a31g2000vbt.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 18, 11:46 pm, Noah Roberts <d...@email.me> wrote:

Considder:

struct ObjectA
{
   ObjectA(ObjectA const&);

   template < typename T >
   ObjectA(T const&);

   void fun() const;
};

struct ObjectB
{
   operator ObjectA () const;
};

static_cast<ObjectA>(an_object_b).fun();

Which constructor does the standard specify will be called during the
static_cast: copy or template?


My first reaction is that it's ambiguous. In both cases
(supposing "an_object_b" has type ObjectB), you need a const
conversion, followed by a user defined conversion. There is
a rule that all other things being equal, a non-template will
have precedence over a template, but I'm not sure it applies
here. And there are all sorts of subtilities involving overload
resolution in the presence of const; I don't have a copy of the
standard here to try to work them out.

Behavior I am seeing is that the templated version is called and then
bases are called on the result of the cast operator.

Is there a way to explicitly call the cast operator or is that what I'm
supposedly doing?


There's no way of explicitly calling either the conversion
operator or the constructor; the only way either gets called is
because of a conversion (explicit or implicit). My feeling is
that either the conversion is ambiguous, or perhaps the
conversion operator should be called, because of the
non-template over template rule; but without having a copy of
the standard to verify it by, I wouldn't want to swear on it.

--
James Kanze

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