Re: Type completeness as library requirement

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Mon, 8 Nov 2010 17:37:12 CST
Message-ID:
<ib947k$kes$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 08.11.2010 08:08, Nikolay Ivchenkov wrote:

According to N3126 - 3.9/9,

   "Scalar types, trivial class types (Clause 9), arrays of such types
and cv-qualified versions of these types (3.9.3) are collectively
called trivial types."

Thus, an array (possibly of unknown bound) can be trivial type, non-
trivial type, or an array type whose triviality cannot be determined
because its element type is incomplete.

According to N3126 - Table 45, preconditions for std::is_trivial are
defined as follows:

   "T shall be a complete type, (possibly cv-qualified) void, or an
array of unknown bound"

It seems that "an array of unknown bound" should be changed to "an
array of unknown bound of a complete element type". Preconditions for
some other templates (e.g., std::is_trivially_copyable,
std::is_standard_layout, std::is_pod, and std::is_literal_type) should
be changed similarly.


I agree and forwarded to LWG.

On the other hand, some preconditions look too restrictive. For
example, std::is_empty and std::is_polymorphic might accept any
incomplete non-class type.


This sounds reasonable as well.

Default allocator and containers like
std::vector might also be instantiated with incomplete element type:

     #include<vector>

     struct A;

     struct X
     {
         // what is the point to require
         // completely defined type A here?
         std::vector<A> v;
     };

     struct A
     {
         int i;
     };

     int main()
     {
         X x;
         x.v.push_back(A());
     }


I would consider these as separate issues, that would break at least some
existing implementations, AKFAIK. I forgot which library implementation it was,
but the program became ill-formed, when std::vector<A> was instantiated with
incomplete A, because some
static assertions assumed the completeness of the value type, which is ok as of
the current specification.

HTH & Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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