Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!brunix!!sdm
From: sdm@cs.brown.edu (Scott Meyers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ coding standards (Comment needed)
Message-ID: <48145@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 90 16:31:22 GMT
References: <883@zinn.MV.COM>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: sdm@cs.brown.edu (Scott Meyers)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 22

In article <883@zinn.MV.COM> mjv@objects.mv.com (Michael J. Vilot) writes:
| I sometimes use objects of classes that only provide constructors and
| destructors.  I use them only for their side-effects.  Here's a simple
| example:
...
| 	  {
| 	    Timer t;
| 
| 	    // do some timed work, and report the time at block exit
| 	  }
...
| The Timer object `t' is only active in the inner block.  Of course, the
| object is apparently never used, so I may get into trouble with those
| building aggressively-optimizing compilers.
| 
| I hope such optimizations allow this use of constructor/destructor
| side-effects.

This doesn't even always work in cfront 2.0, as I found out recently when I
tried implementing a class to automate routine tracing.

Scott