Re: Calling Class Constructor from Another Constructor

From:
Thomas Maeder <maeder@glue.ch>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:25:32 CST
Message-ID:
<m2wss0j3ok.fsf@glue.ch> <ae30208d-4bed-44e0-a234-5665c9346cf2@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
ashwin <ashwindows@gmail.com> writes:

I was trying the following on VC++ 6.0

#include <iostream>
struct A
{
    A(int a)
    {
        x = a;

    }
    A(int a, double b)
    {
        A::A(a);
        y = b;
    }
    int x;
    double y;
};

int main()
{
    A a(1,2.4);
    std::cout<<"x="<<a.x<<std::endl;
    return 0;
}

//Output
x=-858993460

What is wrong with the program ?


It has undefined behavior, because a.x hasn't been initialized before
being read.

Calling a Constructor from Another Constructor invalid in C++ ?


No. But the result isn't what you seem to expect.

The statement

A::A(a);

in the second constructor of class A first constructs a temporary
object and intializes that object's member x with the value of a; the
temporary object is then destructed again. And the x data member of
the object under construction remains uninitialized.

What you are looking for is the possibility for a constructor to
delegate to another. In current C++, this is not possible; it
will be in a future version. Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C++0x#Constructor_delegation

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