On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 17:13, Manfred <mx2927@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The following was asked on comp.lang.c++;
> It compiles and crashes with no error/warning on gcc 8.2.1:
>
> #include <iostream>
> #include <string>
>
> int main()
> {
> std::string s1 { s1 };
> std::string s2(s2);
> std::string s3 = s3;
>
> std::cout << s1 << s2 << s3;
> }
>
> [tmp]$ g++ -Wall selfref.cc && ./a.out
> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
> [tmp]$
>
> On the other hand:
>
> #include <iostream>
>
> int main()
> {
> int n { n };
>
> std::cout << n << std::endl;
> }
>
> [tmp]$ g++ -Wall selfint.cc && ./a.out
> selfint.cc: In function ‘int main()’:
> selfint.cc:5:7: warning: ‘n’ is used uninitialized in this function
> [-Wuninitialized]
> int n { n };
> ^
> 0
> [tmp]$
>
> I wonder why int triggers the warning, but std::string does not.
Well for starters, std::string is not the same as int, not even close.
It's pretty obvious when you think about it. Constructing a
std::string calls a constructor, in this case, it calls the
basic_string(const basic_string&) constructor, and passes the *this as
the argument, which makes a copy of the string. The problem is that
the string was never constructed, so it's a copy of garbage.
Failing to warn about it is a longstanding and well-known defect in
GCC, you can find lots of discussion in bugzilla.
