Why `A & a = a` is valid?

Posted by psaghelyi on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by psaghelyi
Published on 2010-04-13T21:01:19Z Indexed on 2010/04/13 21:03 UTC
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#include <iostream>
#include <assert.h>

using namespace std;

struct Base
{
  Base() : m_member1(1) {}

  Base(const Base & other) 
  { 
    assert(this != &other);   // this should trigger
    m_member1 = other.m_member1; 
  }

  int m_member1;
};

struct Derived
{
  Derived(Base & base) : m_base(m_base) {} // m_base(base)

  Base & m_base;
};

void main()
{
  Base base;

  Derived derived(base);

  cout << derived.m_base.m_member1 << endl; // crashes here
}

The above example is a synthesized version of a mistyped constructor. I used reference at the class member Derived::m_base because I wanted to make sure that the member will be initialized as the constructor had called. One problem is that nor GCC nor MSVC gives me a warning at m_base(m_base). But the more serious for me is that the assert finds everything fine and the application crashes later (sometimes far away from the mistake). Question: Is there any way to indicate such mistakes?

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