Temporaries.html 6.3 KB

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  68. <a name="Temporaries-May-Vanish-Before-You-Expect"></a>
  69. <h4 class="subsection">13.7.3 Temporaries May Vanish Before You Expect</h4>
  70. <a name="index-temporaries_002c-lifetime-of"></a>
  71. <a name="index-portions-of-temporary-objects_002c-pointers-to"></a>
  72. <p>It is dangerous to use pointers or references to <em>portions</em> of a
  73. temporary object. The compiler may very well delete the object before
  74. you expect it to, leaving a pointer to garbage. The most common place
  75. where this problem crops up is in classes like string classes,
  76. especially ones that define a conversion function to type <code>char *</code>
  77. or <code>const char *</code>&mdash;which is one reason why the standard
  78. <code>string</code> class requires you to call the <code>c_str</code> member
  79. function. However, any class that returns a pointer to some internal
  80. structure is potentially subject to this problem.
  81. </p>
  82. <p>For example, a program may use a function <code>strfunc</code> that returns
  83. <code>string</code> objects, and another function <code>charfunc</code> that
  84. operates on pointers to <code>char</code>:
  85. </p>
  86. <div class="smallexample">
  87. <pre class="smallexample">string strfunc ();
  88. void charfunc (const char *);
  89. void
  90. f ()
  91. {
  92. const char *p = strfunc().c_str();
  93. &hellip;
  94. charfunc (p);
  95. &hellip;
  96. charfunc (p);
  97. }
  98. </pre></div>
  99. <p>In this situation, it may seem reasonable to save a pointer to the C
  100. string returned by the <code>c_str</code> member function and use that rather
  101. than call <code>c_str</code> repeatedly. However, the temporary string
  102. created by the call to <code>strfunc</code> is destroyed after <code>p</code> is
  103. initialized, at which point <code>p</code> is left pointing to freed memory.
  104. </p>
  105. <p>Code like this may run successfully under some other compilers,
  106. particularly obsolete cfront-based compilers that delete temporaries
  107. along with normal local variables. However, the GNU C++ behavior is
  108. standard-conforming, so if your program depends on late destruction of
  109. temporaries it is not portable.
  110. </p>
  111. <p>The safe way to write such code is to give the temporary a name, which
  112. forces it to remain until the end of the scope of the name. For
  113. example:
  114. </p>
  115. <div class="smallexample">
  116. <pre class="smallexample">const string&amp; tmp = strfunc ();
  117. charfunc (tmp.c_str ());
  118. </pre></div>
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