Re: Avoid automatic copy constructor generation

From:

Pete Becker <pete@versatilecoding.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:10:57 -0400

Message-ID:

<2008102717105716807-pete@versatilecodingcom>

On 2008-10-27 16:30:13 -0400, Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> said:

One problem with copy constructors (if you have implemented one
explicitly) is that each time you add a new member variable to your
class, you have to remember to add it to the copy constructor (and
assignment operator). This is extremely easy to forget.

Testing will catch that.

If the member
variable is just eg. an int, then it the default copying would be enough
for it, so calling the compiler-generated copy constructor would
automatically copy it without having to do anything special about it.
(The user-written copy constructor could then simply concentrate on the
members which do need special copying.)

So the default copy constructor would only copy members that were not
copied by the user-written one? How could it know?

--
Pete
Roundhouse Consulting, Ltd. (www.versatilecoding.com) Author of "The
Standard C++ Library Extensions: a Tutorial and Reference
(www.petebecker.com/tr1book)