Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!motcsd!hpda!hpcuhb!hpcllla!hpclisp!hpclscu!shankar
From: shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Call of constructors by vectors
Message-ID: <1000012@hpclscu.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Jun 89 19:23:36 GMT
References: <1904@mas1.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Calif. Language Lab
Lines: 28

> A better question is why does:
> 	SomeClass x[100];
> with:
>       inline SomeClass::SomeClass(){}
> cause 100 invocations of this do-nothing "initializer" whereas x1 does not
> cause even 1 invocation of the do-nothing "initializer".

Lazy code generation...

No, I take that back. This is a solvable problem, but I suppose that the
ROI for doing it the most efficient way was not seen as making it
worthwhile to do. Who knows.. In general, it's easy to do the trivial case
of the null constructor (I mean a constructor with an empty body). If the
constructor has even 1 statement, it becomes pretty hard.

A better solution would have been an array constructor syntax. Maybe
something like:

   SomeClass::SomeClass[int count]() { ... }

Naah! :-) (Parsing C++ is already a pain in the ***; no need to make it any
worse).

But seriously, it would address this problem. Only one function is called
with a pointer to the array and a number of elements, and whatever other
parameters the user specifies.
----
Shankar.