Hi Axel - Thanks for the quick reply.
Here's the problem: The intention is that SqMatrix is nothing more than a
Matrix with the property that rows = cols. The class declaration
class SqMatrix : public Matrix {...}
reflects this. So, for example, operator * works in exactly the same way for
SqMatrix as for Matrix, and there should be no need to duplicate the code.
Meanwhile, Matrix declares operator * by
class Matrix { ...
Matrix operator * (const Matrix &) const ;
}
Your solution has extra potential overhead due to the guts-copying of the
Matrix into the new SqMatrix. This could be overcome by using smart_ptr or
smart_array types, but that all shouldn't be necessary. What is wanted is a
cast of a base class object (the returned Matrix) to a reference to derived
class object (to a SqMatrix). However gcc (but not msvc++) rejects it.
I saw Ian's reply, but all it said was "you can't do that". That's not very
helpful - this code has been working for over a decade, so one would hope
that the "dotting i's & crossing t's" of increased language rigor would at
least leave room for a syntactic workaround giving the same (valid) semantic
result.
Axel Freyn wrote:
>
> Hi Oren,
> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 07:36:03AM -0700, Foster Boondoggle wrote:
>>
>> Hi Adam99 - Did you ever get a reply to this? I have the exact same
>> problem
>> (indeed, with SqMatrix and Matrix, though I had though I wrote the class
>> many years ago!) I can't seem to get it to compile in any form with the
>> latest gcc.
>
> Yes, that question was answered by Ian, see e.g.
> http://old.nabble.com/Re%3A-invalid-cast-of-an-rvalue-expression-p23106343.html
> The point is: It is illegal C++ :-)
> Old compilers (like g++ 4.1.2) accepted such constructs, but the new
> gcc-versions detect it as failure
>
> In addition: what this line does, is the following:
> - take "this", a pointer to a "const SqMatrix"
> - convert it to a Pointer to a "Matrix" (already problematic: you
> remove the const-ness here...)
> Yes, that's old-style C++, but equivalent to a const_cast.
>
> - take the element and multiply it with "sm"
> - convert the pointer to a constant reference to a SqMatrix
> This used to be interpreted by the compiler as just an instruction to
> reinterpret the object as being of the derived type.
> - create a copy of this reference and return it.
> How about, just return the object but understand it as being of the
> derived type.
>
> that sounds a bit complex to me.
>
> In order to propose a solution, we would need more information (e.g. how
> are the classes defined? is SqMatrix derived from Matrix? are there any
> Conversion-Operators / Copy-Constructors defined which can be used for
> this conversions?
> The easiest solution for this code segment would be to add a new
> copy-constructor to SqMatrix:
> class SqMatrix {
> public:
> explicit SqMatrix(const Matrix &m) : ...{
> assert(m.Rows() == m.Columns());
> ....
> }
> };
> which verifies that m is really square, and then creates a SqMatrix from
> m (I added "explicit" in order to block implicit type-conversions Matrix
> -> SqMatrix -- this constructor has to be called directly).
>
> With that, you could rewrite your code-segment as
>
> SqMatrix operator * (const SqMatrix &sm) const {
> return SqMatrix(*(const Matrix *)this * sm); }
>
> which would be save (the type-conversion is cleanly done) and portable.
> (however, as I don't know the full code, may be this solution poses
> other problems?)
>
> Axel (I'm not adam99 ;-))
>
> ...
>
>
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