Date
2012-05-08.00:00:00
Message id
6087

Content

There are various operations on std::vector that can cause elements of the vector to be moved from one location to another. A move operation can use either rvalue or const lvalue as argument; the choice depends on the value of !is_nothrow_move_constructible<T>::value && is_copy_constructible<T>::value, where T is the element type. Thus, some operations on std::vector (e.g. 'resize' with single parameter, 'reserve', 'emplace_back') should have conditional requirements. For example, let's consider the requirement for 'reserve' in N3376 – [vector.capacity]/2:

Requires: T shall be MoveInsertable into *this.

This requirement is not sufficient if an implementation is free to select copy constructor when !is_nothrow_move_constructible<T>::value && is_copy_constructible<T>::value evaluates to true. Unfortunately, is_copy_constructible cannot reliably determine whether T is really copy-constructible. A class may contain public non-deleted copy constructor whose definition does not exist or cannot be instantiated successfully (e.g., std::vector<std::unique_ptr<int>> has copy constructor, but this type is not copy-constructible). Thus, the actual requirements should be:

  • if !is_nothrow_move_constructible<T>::value && is_copy_constructible<T>::value then T shall be CopyInsertable into *this;

  • otherwise T shall be MoveInsertable into *this.

Maybe it would be useful to introduce a new name for such conditional requirement (in addition to "CopyInsertable" and "MoveInsertable").