From -6893042022509061198 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,75a9ad8b6ce88ef7 X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public From: Valentin Bonnard Subject: Re: new class initializer syntax? Date: 1997/02/03 Message-ID: <32F43AA4.EEA@pratique.fr>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 214171330 references: <2.2.32.19970130014647.002b4150@central.beasys.com> x-original-date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 06:56:36 +0000 organization: Internet Way x-auth: PGPMoose V1.1 PGP comp.std.c++ newsgroups: comp.std.c++ originator: austern@isolde.mti.sgi.com x-mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Macintosh; I; 68K) David R Tribble wrote: > > Thomas A. Horsley wrote: > > ... I only declare the member variable in > > one place - why do I have to initialize it in every $#@! constructor when I > > just want it to be initialized to zero in all (or most) of 'em anyway? > > > > Has the standard committee considered any kind of new syntax for something > > like a "default initializer", so I can give a member an initial value in the > > class declaration which will be used if I don't provide a different > > initializer in the constructor? > > I'm still of the opinion that member variables ought to be initialized > to zero (0, 0.0, null) by default if they don't have explicit initializers > in the class constructors. > > All the other object-oriented languages guarantee that every variable (and > every reference) has a well-defined initial value, so why not C++? How > many times have people been bitten by uninitialized data? When will the > madness stop? Not every other OOL I know of: Ada does not in any way innitialise vars and Ada 95 is OO; in Ada it's even undefined behaviour to do 'x := x' or 'if x <> 0 then x := 0 endif' if x has not been explicitly set to some value. Also default innitialisations may not be OK for large arrays. -- Valentin Bonnard mailto:bonnardv@pratique.fr http://www.pratique.fr/~bonnardv (Informations sur le C++ en Francais) --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles: Try just posting with your newsreader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu comp.std.c++ FAQ: http://reality.sgi.com/austern/std-c++/faq.html Moderation policy: http://reality.sgi.com/austern/std-c++/policy.html Comments? mailto:std-c++-request@ncar.ucar.edu ]