Section 12.2.5 in C++03 says "A temporary bound to a reference member in a
constructor’s ctor-initializer (12.6.2) persists until the constructor exits"
So I tried following program
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
struct foo
{
foo()
{
cout<<"foo c'tor"<<endl;
}
~foo()
{
cout<<"foo d'tor"<<endl;
}
};
struct bar
{
const foo &ref;
bar():ref(foo())
{
cout<<"bar c'tor"<<endl;
}
};
int main()
{
bar obj;
}
The output I get is :
foo c'tor
foo d'tor
bar c'tor
Now according to standard, temporary generated by foo() in c'tor init-list of bar's c'tor will be destroyed after bar's c'tor so foo d'tor
should be printed after bar c'tor
but it's other way around.
Please explain the reason.
I have tried this with MS VS 2010, and it gives me the output also gives warning during compile:
warning C4413: 'bar::ref' : reference member is initialized to a temporary that doesn't persist after the constructor exits
foo c'tor
bar c'tor
foo d'tor
Press any key to continue . . .
It seems that MS VS 2010 implements specification correctly. I agree that it is a bug for g++.
EDIT: ref should be initialized in constructor`s initialize list.