On Aug 7, 2010, at 8:59 PM, Eric Seidel wrote:
> How about we add a Ptr<T> (or WeakPtr<T> or AutoNull<T> or whatever)
I worked on another project years ago where they had a template like this. The
issue is with a variety of built-in data types, not specific to pointers. Any
built-in data type such as a pointer, integer, or floating point number where
it's not initialized by default can instead be initialized like this:
, m_member()
That syntax will zero-initialize it. So if you have a template like this you
can use it to take care of zero-initialization for any of these types. (For
integers you can even go further and have the template specify the initial
value which means you won’t have to repeat that value in multiple constructors.)
So much for the up-side of a template like this.
The downside is that the object does not have the type we might think it does.
Even if we add assignment operators, conversion constructors and operators in
both directions, it can still give us an unpleasant result in any context where
overloading is involved, such as calling an overloaded function, and we might
need an explicit function to get the actual scalar value, analogous to the get
function we use on smart pointer.
I’m not sure if in practice this “initialize me” template will improve things
much; remembering to use it is not all that much easier than remembering to
initialize in constructors, but I don’t object strongly to the notion.
-- Darin
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