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Forward declarations and return values

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Started by Aardvajk January 01, 2017 08:42 AM

2 comments, last by Aardvajk 7 years, 3 months ago

Aardvajk

13,217

Author

January 01, 2017 08:42 AM

GCC is letting me do something I didn't think was allowed and I was just wondering if this is non-standard or undefined behaviour or not?

I have a Om::Value class, and an Om::ValueList class. ValueList needs to include OmValue.h as it has, for example, Value operator[](int index) method.

But I'm trying to add a ValueList toList() method to Value, which means I have a circular dependancy. But I noticed that if I forward declare ValueList at the top of OmValue.h, GCC is then allowing me to use ValueList as a return type (not a reference or pointer):

class ValueList;

class Value
{
public:
    // snip

    ValueList toList() const; // thought this would throw a "not defined" error?
};

I thought this was not allowed since the compiler would need to know the size of ValueList? Is this non-standard or undefined or something GCC is allowing through an extension, or is this perfectly valid standard C++?

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SiCrane

11,840

January 01, 2017 10:08 AM

It doesn't need to know the size until toList() is actually called. So the declaration is legal, but using the function without the full class definition will give an undefined error.

Alberth

10,209

January 01, 2017 11:30 AM

I thought this was not allowed since the compiler would need to know the size of ValueList?

Where does it need that size here?

"ValueList toList() const" says "There is a 'toList' method in the class, it outputs an object of type ValueList". The class definition only needs the size of the (reference to) the 'toList' method. That reference is not changing size depending on the size of the result of the call. The class definition also does not store the result due to this line.

In context of an actual call to Value::toList(), the code needs to know the size to create space for the return value. It also needs to know the size in context of the 'toList' method implementation, ie


class Value
{
    ...
    ValueList toList() const
    {
        ...
        return values;
    }
};

but you don't do that either here.

Aardvajk

13,217

Author

January 02, 2017 01:18 PM

Thanks guys, all I needed to know.

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Forward declarations and return values

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