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Non-static member initializer from another non-static


Very simple question. Is this valid C++11?

struct Foo {
    int bar = 1;
    int baz = bar;
};

GCC (4.7.2) and Clang (3.1) both accept it with the pedantic settings:

-std=c++11 -Wall -W -pedantic

Intel C++ (13.0.1.117) does not. It barks at int baz = bar; with:

error: a nonstatic member reference must be relative to a specific object

Who is right?

In case you wonder, I use this for code like this, where it brings initialization code closer together, rather than moving the last line into the constructor:

uint8_t colorR = -1;
uint8_t colorG = -1;
uint8_t colorB = -1;
uint8_t colorA = -1;
GLubyte RGBAVec[4] = {colorR, colorG, colorB, colorA};

Solution

  • 5.1p12 An id-expression that denotes a non-static data member or non-static member function of a class can only be used:

    • as part of a class member access (5.2.5) in which the object expression refers to the member’s class or a class derived from that class, or
    • to form a pointer to member (5.3.1), or
    • in a mem-initializer for a constructor for that class or for a class derived from that class (12.6.2), or
    • in a brace-or-equal-initializer for a non-static data member of that class or of a class derived from that class (12.6.2), or
    • if that id-expression denotes a non-static data member and it appears in an unevaluated operand.

    So yes, this :

    struct Foo {
      int bar = 1;
      int baz = bar;
    };
    

    is valid C++11.

    But be carefull about order because :

    12.6.2p10 In a non-delegating constructor, initialization proceeds in the following order:

    • First, and only for the constructor of the most derived class (1.8), virtual base classes are initialized in the order they appear on a depth-first left-to-right traversal of the directed acyclic graph of base classes, where “left-to-right” is the order of appearance of the base classes in the derived class base-specifier-list.
    • Then, direct base classes are initialized in declaration order as they appear in the base-specifier-list (regardless of the order of the mem-initializers).
    • Then, non-static data members are initialized in the order they were declared in the class definition (again regardless of the order of the mem-initializers).
    • Finally, the compound-statement of the constructor body is executed

    So as specified in the Non-static data member initializers proposal (Problem 3) :

    A third issue is that class-scope lookup could turn a compile-time error into a run-time error:

    struct S {
        int i = j; // ill-formed without forward lookup, undefined behavior with
        int j = 3;
    };
    

    (Unless caught by the compiler, i might be intialized with the undefined value of j.)