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c++c++11initializationinitializer-listlist-initialization

Forms of list initialization


See the following code:

std::vector<int> v1{1, 2, 3};
std::vector<int> v2 = {1, 2, 3};

My questions are:

  1. Is there a difference between the two? I know the first one must be list initialization, but how about the second?

  2. Because there is a assign sign for the second, it makes me think that the compiler will use the std::initializer_list to create a temporary vector first, then it use copy constructor to copy the temp vector to v2. Is this the fact?


Solution

  • The two (direct-list-initialization vs copy-list-initialization) are exactly the same in this case. No temporary std::vector is constructed and there's no std::vector::operator= called. The equals sign is part of the initialization syntax.

    There would be a difference if std::vector's constructor overload no. 7 was marked explicit, in which case any copy-initialization fails, but that would be a flaw in the design of the standard library.