Let's assume I have a c++ class that have properly implemented a copy constructor and an overloaded = operator. By properly implemented I mean they are working and perform a deep copy:
Class1::Class1(const Class1 &class1)
{
// Perform copy
}
Class1& Class1::operator=(const Class1 *class1)
{
// perform copy
return *this;
}
Now lets say I have this constructor as well:
Class1::Class1(Class1 *class1)
{
*this = *class1;
}
My question is would the above constructor be acceptable practice? This is code that i've inherited and maintaining.
I would say, "no", for the following reasons:
A traditional copy constructor accepts its argument as a const reference, not as a pointer.
Even if you were to accept a pointer as a parameter, it really ought to be const Class1* to signify that the argument will not be modified.
This copy constructor is inefficient (or won't work!) because all members of Class1 are default-initialized, and then copied using operator=
operator= has the same problem; it should accept a reference, not a pointer.
The traditional way to "re-use" the copy constructor in operator= is the copy-and-swap idiom. I would suggest implementing the class that way.
Personally, I don't think it's good practice.
For the constructor, it's hard to think of a place where an implicit conversion from a pointer to an object to the object itself would be useful.
There's no reason for the pointer to be to non-const, and if you have available pointer to the class it is not hard to dereference it, and so clearly state your intention of wanting to copy the object using the copy constructor.
Similarly, for the non-standard assignment operator why allow assignment from a pointer when correctly dereferencing at the call site is clearer and more idiomatic?
I believe a somewhat more important issue than what has been discussed so far is that your non-standard assignment operator does not stop the compiler from generating the standard one. Since you've decided that you need to create an assignment operator (good bet since you made the copy constructor), the default is almost certainly not sufficient. Thus a user of this class could fall prey to this problem during what would seem very basic and standard use of an object to almost anyone.
Objects and pointers to objects are two very different things. Typically, when you're passing objects around, you expect that they're going to be copied (though, ideally functions would take const refs where possible to reduce/eliminate unnecessary copies). When you're passing a pointer around, you don't expect any copying to take place. You're passing around a pointer to a specific object and, depending on the code, it could really matter that you deal with that specific object and not a copy of it.
Assignment operators and constructors that take pointers to the type - especially constructors which can be used for implicit conversion - are really going to muddle things and stand a high chance of creating unintended copies, which not only could be a performance issue, but it could cause bugs.
I can't think of any good reason why you would ever want to make the conversion between a pointer to a type and the type itself implicit - or even explicit. The built-in way to do that is to dereference the object. I suppose that there might be some set of specific circumstances which I can't think of where this sort of thing might be necessary or a good idea, but I really doubt it. Certainly, I would strongly advise against doing it unless you have a specific and good reason for doing so.
Related
I have:
MyClass myObject1( var1, var2 );
myObject1.someMethod(); //> Changes the interal state of the object
Now at some point I want to assign to myObject1 a "clean" object of type MyClass. Something like:
myObject1 = MyClass( otherVar1, otherVar2 );
Without using pointers (and/or unique_ptr) is there any fast/efficient way to do it?
Point 1. Don't worry about performance until you have data from your profiler indicating that you should. Doing otherwise is called premature optimization, and it's a bad thing. Choose the simplest design first.
Point 2. In C++11, you can write a move assignment operator for MyClass, if that makes sense in your case (hard to say without knowing the definition of MyClass).
However, an even better idea would be to use RAII wrappers such as unique_ptr as members of your class, and let the compiler-generated move assignment operator do a member-wise move and delegate the work to the move assignment operator of your members. Then, the move assignment operator of your unique_ptr would take care of doing The Right Thing.
This way you would not have to bother following the Rule of Three, Rule of Five, or whatnot, you would get optimal performance, and (as a bonus) exception-safety. Avoid defining your own special member functions, and get used to follow the Rule of Zero.
As mentioned by juanchopanza in the comments, in C++03 you could provide a no-throw swap() function - but again, that may or may not help depending on the definition of your class.
Copy constructors were traditionally ubiquitous in C++ programs. However, I'm doubting whether there's a good reason to that since C++11.
Even when the program logic didn't need copying objects, copy constructors (usu. default) were often included for the sole purpose of object reallocation. Without a copy constructor, you couldn't store objects in a std::vector or even return an object from a function.
However, since C++11, move constructors have been responsible for object reallocation.
Another use case for copy constructors was, simply, making clones of objects. However, I'm quite convinced that a .copy() or .clone() method is better suited for that role than a copy constructor because...
Copying objects isn't really commonplace. Certainly it's sometimes necessary for an object's interface to contain a "make a duplicate of yourself" method, but only sometimes. And when it is the case, explicit is better than implicit.
Sometimes an object could expose several different .copy()-like methods, because in different contexts the copy might need to be created differently (e.g. shallower or deeper).
In some contexts, we'd want the .copy() methods to do non-trivial things related to program logic (increment some counter, or perhaps generate a new unique name for the copy). I wouldn't accept any code that has non-obvious logic in a copy constructor.
Last but not least, a .copy() method can be virtual if needed, allowing to solve the problem of slicing.
The only cases where I'd actually want to use a copy constructor are:
RAII handles of copiable resources (quite obviously)
Structures that are intended to be used like built-in types, like math vectors or matrices -
simply because they are copied often and vec3 b = a.copy() is too verbose.
Side note: I've considered the fact that copy constructor is needed for CAS, but CAS is needed for operator=(const T&) which I consider redundant basing on the exact same reasoning;
.copy() + operator=(T&&) = default would be preferred if you really need this.)
For me, that's quite enough incentive to use T(const T&) = delete everywhere by default and provide a .copy() method when needed. (Perhaps also a private T(const T&) = default just to be able to write copy() or virtual copy() without boilerplate.)
Q: Is the above reasoning correct or am I missing any good reasons why logic objects actually need or somehow benefit from copy constructors?
Specifically, am I correct in that move constructors took over the responsibility of object reallocation in C++11 completely? I'm using "reallocation" informally for all the situations when an object needs to be moved someplace else in the memory without altering its state.
The problem is what is the word "object" referring to.
If objects are the resources that variables refers to (like in java or in C++ through pointers, using classical OOP paradigms) every "copy between variables" is a "sharing", and if single ownership is imposed, "sharing" becomes "moving".
If objects are the variables themselves, since each variables has to have its own history, you cannot "move" if you cannot / don't want to impose the destruction of a value in favor of another.
Cosider for example std::strings:
std::string a="Aa";
std::string b=a;
...
b = "Bb";
Do you expect the value of a to change, or that code to don't compile? If not, then copy is needed.
Now consider this:
std::string a="Aa";
std::string b=std::move(a);
...
b = "Bb";
Now a is left empty, since its value (better, the dynamic memory that contains it) had been "moved" to b. The value of b is then chaged, and the old "Aa" discarded.
In essence, move works only if explicitly called or if the right argument is "temporary", like in
a = b+c;
where the resource hold by the return of operator+ is clearly not needed after the assignment, hence moving it to a, rather than copy it in another a's held place and delete it is more effective.
Move and copy are two different things. Move is not "THE replacement for copy". It an more efficient way to avoid copy only in all the cases when an object is not required to generate a clone of itself.
Short anwer
Is the above reasoning correct or am I missing any good reasons why logic objects actually need or somehow benefit from copy constructors?
Automatically generated copy constructors are a great benefit in separating resource management from program logic; classes implementing logic do not need to worry about allocating, freeing or copying resources at all.
In my opinion, any replacement would need to do the same, and doing that for named functions feels a bit weird.
Long answer
When considering copy semantics, it's useful to divide types into four categories:
Primitive types, with semantics defined by the language;
Resource management (or RAII) types, with special requirements;
Aggregate types, which simply copy each member;
Polymorphic types.
Primitive types are what they are, so they are beyond the scope of the question; I'm assuming that a radical change to the language, breaking decades of legacy code, won't happen. Polymorphic types can't be copied (while maintaining the dynamic type) without user-defined virtual functions or RTTI shenanigans, so they are also beyond the scope of the question.
So the proposal is: mandate that RAII and aggregate types implement a named function, rather than a copy constructor, if they should be copied.
This makes little difference to RAII types; they just need to declare a differently-named copy function, and users just need to be slightly more verbose.
However, in the current world, aggregate types do not need to declare an explicit copy constructor at all; one will be generated automatically to copy all the members, or deleted if any are uncopyable. This ensures that, as long as all the member types are correctly copyable, so is the aggregate.
In your world, there are two possibilities:
Either the language knows about your copy-function, and can automatically generate one (perhaps only if explicitly requested, i.e. T copy() = default;, since you want explicitness). In my opinion, automatically generating named functions based on the same named function in other types feels more like magic than the current scheme of generating "language elements" (constructors and operator overloads), but perhaps that's just my prejudice speaking.
Or it's left to the user to correctly implement copying semantics for aggregates. This is error-prone (since you could add a member and forget to update the function), and breaks the current clean separation between resource management and program logic.
And to address the points you make in favour:
Copying (non-polymorphic) objects is commonplace, although as you say it's less common now that they can be moved when possible. It's just your opinion that "explicit is better" or that T a(b); is less explicit than T a(b.copy());
Agreed, if an object doesn't have clearly defined copy semantics, then it should have named functions to cover whatever options it offers. I don't see how that affects how normal objects should be copied.
I've no idea why you think that a copy constructor shouldn't be allowed to do things that a named function could, as long as they are part of the defined copy semantics. You argue that copy constructors shouldn't be used because of artificial restrictions that you place on them yourself.
Copying polymorphic objects is an entirely different kettle of fish. Forcing all types to use named functions just because polymorphic ones must won't give the consistency you seem to be arguing for, since the return types would have to be different. Polymorphic copies will need to be dynamically allocated and returned by pointer; non-polymorphic copies should be returned by value. In my opinion, there is little value in making these different operations look similar without being interchangable.
One case where copy constructors come in useful is when implementing the strong exception guarantees.
To illustrate the point, let's consider the resize function of std::vector. The function might be implemented roughly as follows:
void std::vector::resize(std::size_t n)
{
if (n > capacity())
{
T *newData = new T [n];
for (std::size_t i = 0; i < capacity(); i++)
newData[i] = std::move(m_data[i]);
delete[] m_data;
m_data = newData;
}
else
{ /* ... */ }
}
If the resize function were to have a strong exception guarantee we need to ensure that, if an exception is thrown, the state of the std::vector before the resize() call is preserved.
If T has no move constructor, then we will default to the copy constructor. In this case, if the copy constructor throws an exception, we can still provide strong exception guarantee: we simply delete the newData array and no harm to the std::vector has been done.
However, if we were using the move constructor of T and it threw an exception, then we have a bunch of Ts that were moved into the newData array. Rolling this operation back isn't straight-forward: if we try to move them back into the m_data array the move constructor of T may throw an exception again!
To resolve this issue we have the std::move_if_noexcept function. This function will use the move constructor of T if it is marked as noexcept, otherwise the copy constructor will be used. This allows us to implement std::vector::resize in such a way as to provide a strong exception guarantee.
For completeness, I should mention that C++11 std::vector::resize does not provide a strong exception guarantee in all cases. According to www.cplusplus.com we have the the follow guarantees:
If n is less than or equal to the size of the container, the function never throws exceptions (no-throw guarantee).
If n is greater and a reallocation happens, there are no changes in the container in case of exception (strong guarantee) if the type of the elements is either copyable or no-throw moveable.
Otherwise, if an exception is thrown, the container is left with a valid state (basic guarantee).
Here's the thing. Moving is the new default- the new minimum requirement. But copying is still often a useful and convenient operation.
Nobody should bend over backwards to offer a copy constructor anymore. But it is still useful for your users to have copyability if you can offer it simply.
I would not ditch copy constructors any time soon, but I admit that for my own types, I only add them when it becomes clear I need them- not immediately. So far this is very, very few types.
I'm trying to understand the purpose of overloading some operators in C++.
Conceptually, an assignment statement can be easily implemented via:
Destruction of the old object followed by copy construction of the new object
Copy construction of the new object, followed by a swap with the old object, followed by destruction of the old object
In fact, often, the copy-and-swap implementation is the implementation of assignment in real code.
Why, then, does C++ allow the programmer to overload the assignment operator, instead of just performing the above?
Was it intended to allow a scenario in which assignment is faster than destruction + construction?
If so, when does that happen? And if not, then what use case was it intended to support?
1) Reference counting
Suppose you have a resource that is ref-counted and it is wrapped in objects.
void operator=(const MyObject& v) {
this->resource = refCount(v->resource);
}
// Here the internal resource will be copied and not the objects.
MyObject A = B;
2) Or you just want to copy the fields without fancy semantics.
void operator=(const MyObject& v) {
this->someField = v->someField;
}
// So this statement should generate just one function call and not a fancy
// collection of temporaries that require construction destruction.
MyObject A = B;
In both cases the code runs much faster. In the second case the effect is similar.
3) Also what about types...
Use the operator to handle assigning other types to your type.
void operator=(const MyObject& v) {
this->someField = v->someField;
}
void operator=(int x) {
this->value = x;
}
void operator=(float y) {
this->floatValue = y;
}
first, note that "Destruction of the old object followed by copy construction of the new object" is not exception safe.
but re "Copy construction of the new object, followed by a swap with the old object, followed by destruction of the old object", that's the swap idiom for implementing an assignment operator, and it's exception safe if done correctly.
in some cases a custom assignment operator can be faster than the swap idiom. for example, direct arrays of POD type can't really be swapped except by way of lower level assignments. so there for the swap idiom you can expect an overhead proportional to the array size.
however, historically there wasn't much focus on swapping and exception safety.
bjarne wanted exceptions originally (if i recall correctly), but they didn't get into the language until 1989 or thereabouts. so the original c++ way of programming was more focused on assignments. to the degree that a failing constructor signalled its failure by assigning 0 to this… i think, that in those days your question would not have made sense. it was just assignments all over.
typewise, some objects have identity, and others have value. it makes sense to assign to value objects, but for identity objects one typically wants to limit the ways that the object can be modified. while this doesn't require the ability to customize copy assignment (only to make it unavailable), with that ability one doesn't need any other language support.
and i think likewise for any other specific reasons one can think of: probably no such reason really requires the general ability, but the general ability is sufficient to cover it all, so it lowers the overall language complexity.
a good source to get more definitive answer than my hunches, recollections and gut feelings, is bjarne's "the design and evolution of c++" book.
probably the question has a definitive answer there.
Destruction of the old object, followed by copy construction of
the new, will not usually work. And the swap idiom is
guaranteed not to work unless the class provides a special swap
function—std::swap uses assignment in its unspecialized
implementation, and using it directly in the assignment operator
will lead to endless recursion.
And of course, the user may want to do something special, e.g.
make the assignment operator private, for example.
And finally, what is almost certainly an overruling reason: the
default assignment operator has to be compatible with C.
Actually, after seeing juanchopanza's answer (which was deleted), I think I ended up figuring it out myself.
Copy-assignment operators allow classes like basic_string to avoid allocating resources unnecessarily when they can re-use them (in this case, memory).
So when you assign to a basic_string, an overloaded copy assignment operator would avoid allocating memory, and would just copy the string data directly to the existing buffer.
If the object had to be destroyed and constructed again, the buffer would have to be reallocated, which would be potentially much more costly for a small string.
(Note that vector could benefit from this too, but only if it knew that the elements' copy constructors would never throw exceptions. Otherwise it would need to maintain its exception safety and actually perform a copy-and-swap.)
It allows you to use assignment of other types as well.
You could have a class Person with an assignment operator that assigns an ID.
But besides that, you don't always want to copy all the members as they are.
The default assignment only does a shallow copy.
For example, if the class contains pointers, or locks, you dont always want to copy them from the other object.
Usually when you have pointers you want to use a deep copy, and maybe create a copy of the object that the pointers are pointed to.
And if you have locks, you want them to be specific to the object, and you don't want to copy their state from the other object.
It is actually a common practice to provide your own copy constructor and assignment operator if your class holds pointers as members.
I have used it often as a conversion constructor but with already existing objects. i.e assigning member variable type, etc to an object.
I've written a simple linked list because a recent interview programming challenge showed me how rusty my C++ has gotten. On my list I declared a private copy constructor because I wanted to explicitly avoid making any copies (and of course, laziness). I ran in to some trouble when I wanted to return an object by value that owns one of my lists.
class Foo
{
MyList<int> list; // MyList has private copy constructor
public:
Foo() {};
};
class Bar
{
public:
Bar() {};
Foo getFoo()
{
return Foo();
}
};
I get a compiler error saying that MyList has a private copy constructor when I try to return a Foo object by value. Should Return-Value-Optimization negate the need for any copying? Am I required to write a copy constructor? I'd never heard of move constructors until I started looking for solutions to this problem, is that the best solution? If so, I'll have to read up on them. If not, what is the preferred way to solve this problem?
The standard explicitly states that the constructor still needs to be accessible, even if it is optimized away. See 12.8/32 in a recent draft.
I prefer making an object movable and non-copyable in such situations. It makes ownership very clear and explicit.
Otherwise, your users can always use a shared_ptr. Hiding shared ownership is at best a questionable idea (unless you can guarantee all your values are immutable).
The basic problem is that return by value might copy. The C++ implementation is not required by the standard to apply copy-elision where it does apply. That's why the object still has to be copyable: so that the implementation's decision when to use it doesn't affect whether the code is well-formed.
Anyway, it doesn't necessarily apply to every copy that the user might like it to. For example there is no elision of copy assignment.
I think your options are:
implement a proper copy. If someone ends up with a slow program due to copying it then their profiler will tell them, you don't have to make it your job to stop them if you don't want to.
implement a proper move, but no copy (C++11 only).
change getFoo to take a Foo& (or maybe Foo*) parameter, and avoid a copy by somehow mutating their object. An efficient swap would come in handy for that. This is fairly pointless if getFoo really returns a default-constructed Foo as in your example, since the caller needs to construct a Foo before they call getFoo.
return a dynamically-allocated Foo wrapped in a smart pointer: either auto_ptr or unique_ptr. Functions defined to create an object and transfer sole ownership to their caller should not return shared_ptr since it has no release() function.
provide a copy constructor but make it blow up somehow (fail to link, abort, throw an exception) if it's ever used. The problems with this are (1) it's doomed to fail but the compiler says nothing, (2) you're enforcing quality of implementation, so your class doesn't work if someone deliberately disables RVO for whatever reason.
I may have missed some.
The solution would be implementing your own copy constructor that would use other methods of MyList to implement the copy semantics.
... I wanted to explicitly avoid making any copies
You have to choose. Either you can't make copies of an object, like std::istream; then you have to hold such objects in pointers/references, since these can be copied (in C++11, you can use move semantics instead). Or you implement the copy constructor, which is probably easier then solving problems on each place a copy is needed.
I can't use shared_ptr in my project, no boost :(
So, I'm having a class roughly similar to the one below:
class MyClass
{
private:
std::auto_ptr<MyOtherClass> obj;
};
Now, I want to store the instances of above class in std::vector. Is it safe? I've read here that it's wrong to use std::auto_ptr with STL containers. Does it apply to my situation here?
It is not safe, bacause when container will copy MyClass instnace default copy operator will call copy for all members - and for auto_ptr member too and we will have same situation as you describe in your question ( storing auto_ptr in container )
BTW: for avoid confusion at compile time add
private:
MyClass& operator=( const MyClass& );
MyClass( const MyClass& );
compiler output error if you will try use copy operators, this can save you from hours of debug.
As Neil Butterworth said, auto_ptr is probably not the way to go.
boost::shared_ptr clearly is, but you say you can't use boost.
Let me mention that you could download boost, extract what you need for shared\ptr only using the bcp tool and use boost::shared_ptr. It would only mean a few added hpp files in your project. I believe it's the right way to go.
It is not valid to have an object that contains an auto_ptr in a standard container. You run into undefined behavior. Two common problems:
std::vector<>::resize copies its argument into each created element. The first copy will "succeed" (see below why not), but each further copy will be empty, because the element copied is also empty!
If something during reallocation throws, you can happen to have some elements copied (to a new buffer) - but the copy being thrown away - and other elements not, because push_back must not have any effects if an exception is being thrown. Thus some of your elements are now empty.
As this is all about undefined behavior it does not really matter. But even if we try to come up with this behavior based on what we think is valid, we would fail anyway. All the member functions like push_back, resize and so on have a const reference that takes an object of type T. Thus, a reference of type T const& is tried to copied into elements of the vector. But the implicitly created copy constructor/copy assignment operator looks like T(T&) - that is, it requires a non-const object to be copied from! Good implementations of the Standard library check that, and fail to compile if necessary.
Until the next C++ version, you have to live with this. The next one will support element types that are merely movable. That is, a moved object does not need to be equal to the object moved to. That will allow putting streams, transfer-of-ownership pointers and threads into containers.
See what the Standard says for this (17.4.3.6):
In certain cases (replacement functions, handler functions, operations on types used to instantiate standard library template components), the C++ Standard Library depends on components supplied by a C++ program. If these components do not meet their requirements, the Standard places no requirements on the implementation.
In particular, the effects are undefined in the following cases:
for types used as template arguments when instantiating a template component, if the operations on the type do not implement the semantics of the applicable Requirements subclause (20.1.5, 23.1, 24.1, 26.1).
I've posted a question as a follow-up
to this answer, see
Class containing auto_ptr stored in vector.
Assming your class does not have a user-defined copy constructor, then no, it is probably (see below) not safe. When your class is copied (as will happen when it is added to a vector) the copy constructor of the auto_ptr will be used. This has the weird behaviour of tranferring ownership of the thing being copied to the copy and, so the thing being copied's pointer is now null.
It is possible, though unlikely, that you actually want this behaviour, in which case an auto_ptr is safe. Assuming you do not, you should either:
add a copy constructor to manage the copying
Note this is not enough - see the follow-up question mentioned above for more info.
or:
use a smarter, possibly reference counted pointer, such as one of the boost smart pointers
Copying MyClass object will cause either call to assignment operator or copy constructor. If they are not overloaded to handle auto_ptr<> in unusual way, they will propagate the call to copy constructor (or assignment operator) to the auto_ptr<> member. This may lead to problems described in question you had linked.
The reason why it is not safe to instanciate a vector of auto_pointer is that there is an algorithm : sort(), that will do a copy of one object in your container on the stack. (sort() implements quicksort which needs a "pivot")
And therefore deleting it when going out of scpope of the sort() function.
As well any algorithm, or function of your own that are able to take your container as parameter, and copy one of its object on the stack will cause this issue as a result.
Well in your case, it is simple you must ensure your class does not behaves as an auto_ptr, or ensure you will never call such function/algorithm that can delete your underlying objects. The first solution is best, according to me :)
So your copy constructor and your affectation operator as well, should not give away property of the pointer object.
The best way to achieve that is to wrapp a boost smart pointer instead of an auto_ptr, to make your container safe when calling such function/algorithm.
By the way according to me, defining a better copy constructor/affectation operator to bypass this issue is not a good solution: I can't see a good copy constructor implementation (and affectation operator as well) that could keep safe the result of applying the sort() algorithm.
If you want to use a class that uses auto_ptr in a container, you can just provide a copy-constructor and assignment operator yourself:
class MyClass
{
private:
const std::auto_ptr<MyOtherClass> obj; // Note const here to keep the pointer from being modified.
public:
MyClass(const MyClass &other) : obj(new MyOtherClass(*other.obj)) {}
MyClass &operator=(const MyClass &other)
{
*obj = *other.obj;
return *this;
}
};
But as mentioned elsewhere, the standard lets containers make copies and assignments and assumes that the contained classes will behave in a specific manner that auto_ptr violates. By defining the methods above, you can make a class that contains an auto_ptr behave. Even if your implementation works fine with auto_ptrs, you run the risk of finding another implementation doesn't work. The standard only make guarantees of performance and observable behaviour, not implementation.
It will not work. auto_ptr doesn't count references which means at the first destructor call your pointer will be freed.
Use boost::shared_ptr instead.