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From: sher@rochester.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c++
Subject: Initializing objects on the heap
Message-ID: <17755@rochester.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 30-Apr-86 21:34:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocheste.17755
Posted: Wed Apr 30 21:34:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 3-May-86 18:07:36 EDT
Reply-To: sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept
Lines: 23
Keywords: heap, new

Right now I am writing in c++ a program to manipulate a linked list.

This means that proceedures and function often want to create objects
on the heap since it is a bad idea to return objects on the stack.
Also it is a good idea to initialize all objects you create.

The only way I know to put an initialized object onto the heap is:

foo * fp = new foo;
foo f ( init );
*fp = init;

If f is a large object with many pieces this is a very wasteful proceedure
since this involves copying f into the space of fp after going to the
work of creating and allocating f.  Is there a better way of doing
this?  I know it can be done by creating a function that takes
fp and initializes it with init but I find this inelegant.  Why have
constructors if they have to always be bypassed?

-- 
-David Sher
sher@rochester
seismo!rochester!sher