g++ -- can unused constructors affect generated code??

[Miles Bader <miles.bader@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Sorry if this is a dup -- I earlier posted it via a newsreader, but
then later realized I have no idea if that newsgroup is gatewayed to the
mailing list or not.]

I have a fairly straight-forward "Color" class, which works pretty well.
Recently I added a new constructor for I/O purposes, and very oddly, it
seems to be making the generated code worse, even in places that most
certainly don't call the constructor.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to work out exactly what's going on,
but this is very confusing -- I though C++ constructors were essentially
"free" in the sense that if you didn't use them (including
accidentally), they could not affect code.  Is this assumption not true?

Here's a basic snippet of the class (lots of hair omitted though); the
new constructor is the weird one with lots of args and "explicit" -- I
added all that to make damn sure it wasn't getting called by accident:

   class Color
   {
   public:

     typedef float component_t;

     Color () : _r (0), _g (0), _b (0) { }
     Color (component_t r, component_t g, component_t b)
       : _r (r), _g (g), _b (b)
     { }
     Color (int grey) : _r (grey), _g (grey), _b (grey) { }
     Color (float grey) : _r (grey), _g (grey), _b (grey) { }
     Color (double grey) : _r (grey), _g (grey), _b (grey) { }

     // This is never used, but if I delete it, generated code changes!!
     //
     explicit Color (const float *tuple, const float *tuple2, 
                     const float *tuple3, const float *tuple4,
                     const float *lots, const float *of, const float *crap)
       : _r (tuple[0]), _g (tuple[1]), _b (tuple[2])
     { }

     // ... methods (none virtual)

     component_t _r, _g, _b;
   };


As you can see the funny constructor is very basic.

If I comment out that constructor, then in an optimized build, the code
changes in funny ways -- I'm not sure what's going on, but in some cases
for instance, it seems to assume more registers are getting clobbered by
calls (sorry for the vagueness, I don't have a nice enough test case
that I want to post it here).  In a non-optimized build, the difference
goes away.

I realize this isn't a good bug report, but I'm just searching for hints
to help me figure out what's going on...


Here's the version of g++ I'm using:

   g++ (GCC) 4.1.2 20060715 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-9)


Thanks,

-Miles

-- 
Suburbia: where they tear out the trees and then name streets after them.