In this response, tloveless pointed out that it's possible in MSVC to use this->foo::foo(42);
for constructor delegation to directly call a constructor:
#include <iostream>
struct foo
{
int m;
foo(int p) : m(p) { std::cout << "foo("<<p<<")\n"; }
foo()
: m(0)
{
this->foo::foo(42);
std::cout << "foo(), " << m << "\n";
}
};
int main()
{
foo f;
std::cin.ignore();
}
I was surprised that this even compiles in MSVC; clang++, g++ and me agree it's illegal, e.g. [class.ctor]/2 "Because constructors do not have names, they are never found during name lookup"
However, MSVC doesn't even emit a warning with /Wall
and without language extensions /Za
in MSVC12 Update 1 (2013) and MSVC10 SP1 (2010).
The output is:
foo(42) foo(), 42
in both versions. So there's no temporary created, but a constructor called.
Questions:
- What is the name of this extension?
- Isn't it considered an extension? (
/Za
and the list of extensions don't seem to think so) - Is there some documentation for / official description of this feature?
(I tagged this question with the [delegating-constructors] tag since it reminds me heavily of this feature)
meta-info: I'm almost sure this question is a duplicate, since this feature is somewhat known. For example, see this answer to a "similar question". Please do not hesitate closing this as a dup if you can find an answer that describes this feature.