Hi,
Am 26.07.2018 um 20:32 schrieb Julian Harnath:
Am 26.07.2018 um 12:13 schrieb Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>:
Am 26.07.2018 um 11:43 schrieb Julian Harnath:
Am 26.07.2018 um 11:26 schrieb Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx
<mailto:superstippi@xxxxxx>>:
You did /not/ say media_format ist not a POD type.Relevant article from C++ FAQ:
https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/intrinsic-types#pod-types
Given that, current media_format is not a POD (has private members, an overload
of assignment op, etc).
The point is that memset() is currently effective at initializing a media_format including the
complex fields that it has, since all of those end up in POD fields themselves, and the enum values
which mean "uninitalized" all have a value of "0". It has been designed that
way.
While that is true for the individual members, as pointed out above, the
resulting struct still does not meet the requirements for POD in C++03, and so,
I don’t think that doing memset/memcpy/etc on it is safe. Unfortunately, I
cannot find references for this in C++03, so I’ll have to stay with a „don’t
think“ here…
I don’t oppose having a Clear() method, but I think that the current
implementation is bad, because it most probably uses undefined behaviour
(although it might just work in practice, but that’s not enough). gcc has its
reason to throw a warning, and moving the memset to Clear() only hides that by
adding a level of indirection.
Btw for C++11, documentation is easier to find and the situation is more clear
[0]: memset/memcpy/etc are only allowed [1] on „trivially copyable“ [2] types.
There’s another thing which I’ll just pull out of another message…
I begin to think you may be confused as to how unions work. There isn't a concept of an
"active field". The memory of the fields overlaps, and you can access the same
memory via all the defined fields at the same time.
That is actually not true in C++. Unions have been used that way („type
punning“, i.e. write into the union using one of its types, then read with
another) for a long time, but even in C it was not originally allowed. Some
compilers (e.g. gcc) implemented a compiler-specific extension to allow it [3].
Since C99, it actually is allowed in the C language [4], but still not in C++
[5].
And yes, that makes unions way less useful in C++ (and in older C versions)
than many people think... it’s really all just about saving memory, not easy
access via multiple types.
