Re: initializer list question...

From:
Alan Johnson <awjcs@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:40:35 -0800
Message-ID:
<erlkal$uui$1@aioe.org>
John Ratliff wrote:

I've been using g++ for a long time (and this is not a g++ question),
and I recently started using MSVC Express. Some of my programs that I
rebuilt with MSVC give me a warning I don't understand.

..\..\source\view\Frame.cc(46) : warning C4355: 'this' : used in base
member initializer list

The offending line:

Frame::Frame() : timer(this, ID_SBTIMER), sram(NULL),
ignoreTextEvents(true) {

Is it bad to use 'this' here? I've never had a problem with the binary
compiled either by g++ or MSVC, but is it wrong or dangerous in some way?

Thanks,

--John Ratliff


You can easily get undefined behavior passing 'this' to something in an
initializer list. Consider the following example to see why:

struct A
{
     int x ;
} ;

struct C ;

struct B
{

     B(C * p) ;
} ;

struct C
{
     B b ;
     A a ;

     C() ;
} ;

B::B(C * p)
{
     // p->a hasn't been constructed yet! Undefined behavior.
     p->a.x = 42 ;
}

C::C() : b(this)
{}

Of course, this is just a warning. If you are sure you don't have any
undefined behavior, then you can ignore it or disable it. I think in
VC++ you would disable it with something like:
#pragma warning(disable:4355)

--
Alan Johnson

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