Re: Why does this work?

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:59:56 CST
Message-ID:
<j2034g$on2$1@dont-email.me>
On 2011-08-11 11:03, Hakusa@gmail.com wrote:
[..]

While others' responses have deemed this undefined (and i don't doubt
it is), i have actually seen code depending on this behavior. Though i
don't have access to it ATM, it worked like so:

int main()
{
    SomeLibraryClass* instance = 0;
    instance = instance->initialize();
}

I can't speak on whether this is a sane thing to do, (making
initialize() static or free wouldn't cause any 'obvious' harm) but it
seemed interesting in relation to your case.


I must say that I cannot find any good reason in this example, *not* to use a free function or a static member function of the class SomeLibraryClass. Obviously the above code cannot take any advantage of (runtime) polymorphism and to me it does nothing but obfuscate the flow control.

Just my opinion,

- Daniel Kr?gler

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