Initialization via ctor vs. initialization via assignment

[Matthias Kaeppler]

Hi,

say I have an arbitrary class Bar:

1 Bar a;
2 Bar b(a);
3 Bar c = a;

In line 3, is the default ctor called for c _first_ and _then_ the
assignment operator, or is c never default constructed and immediately
initialized with a?

My point is, for complex objects, is it likely that initialization via
assignment is less efficient than via constructor calls? What is the
recommended approach?

--
Matthias Kaeppler

[Gianni Mariani]

Matthias Kaeppler wrote:

Hi,

say I have an arbitrary class Bar:

1 Bar a;
2 Bar b(a);
3 Bar c = a;

In line 3, is the default ctor called for c _first_ and _then_ the
assignment operator, or is c never default constructed and immediately
initialized with a?

My point is, for complex objects, is it likely that initialization via
assignment is less efficient than via constructor calls? What is the
recommended approach?

2 & 3 mean exactly the same thing. BTW, one way of answering this
questing is by writing a 30 liner like so.

#include <iostream>
#include <ostream>

struct A
{
A()
{
std::cout << "A default\n";
}

A( const A & )
{
std::cout << "A copy\n";
}

A & operator= ( const A & )
{
std::cout << "A operator =\n";
return * this;
}

};
int main()
{
std::cout << "A x;\n";
A x;

std::cout << "A y( x );\n";
A y( x );

std::cout << "A z = x;\n";
A z = x;
}

[Victor Bazarov]

Matthias Kaeppler wrote:

say I have an arbitrary class Bar:

1 Bar a;
2 Bar b(a);
3 Bar c = a;

In line 3, is the default ctor called for c _first_ and _then_ the
assignment operator,
No.
or is c never default constructed and immediately
initialized with a?
'c' is constructed from 'a' via the copy c-tor. Since 'a' and 'c' are
of the same type, the case 3 is the same as the case 2.
My point is, for complex objects, is it likely that initialization via
assignment is less efficient than via constructor calls? What is the
recommended approach?

There is no assignment involved in construction (unless you make it so).

V