Re: Inline functions and locals

From	James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c++
Subject	Re: Inline functions and locals
Date	2022-01-12 12:47 -0500
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<srn48b$gj7$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<srmvu4$oie$1@gioia.aioe.org>

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On 1/12/22 11:34 AM, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:
> I'm curious as to why returning a reference to a local inside an inline
> function isn't (apparently) allowed. eg:
> 
> #include <iostream>
> #include <string>
> 
> using namespace std;
> 
> inline string &func()
> {
>         string s = "hello";
>         return s;
> }
> 
> 
> 
> int main()
> {
>         cout << func() << endl;
>         return 0;
> }
> 
> This causes a compilation warning with clang and when run prints out garbage
> as you'd expect if it were a non inline. However surely if the function is
> truly inline it should work. Are locals for inlines temporaries created on the 
> heap instead of being stored on the same stack as the calling function locals?

Calls to functions declared "inline" have the same semantics as they
would have if not so declared, they can simply be optimized by replacing
the function call with local code, but only if that local code has the
SAME semantics. The following code is equivalent to what the compile is
allowed to do with inline functions. To make this work, I need to
explicitly declare a variable that corresponds to the return value from
the function, but I'm going to have to change it to a pointer rather
than a reference, because this re-write wouldn't work with a reference.
For a great many purposes, references are semantically equivalent to
const pointers, the differences are mainly syntactic. However, for
reasons that will hopefully be clear when you think about it, I can't
use a const pointer OR a real reference in the following re-write:

    int main()
    {
        string *tmp;

        {
            string s = "hello";
            tmp = &s;
        }

        cout << *tmp << endl;
        return 0;
    }

The object `s` in func() and the object `s` in my re-write both have
lifetimes that end when the `}` that terminates the enclosing block is
reached. Dereferencing tmp at any time after the lifetime of the object
it refers to has ended has undefined behavior, for the same reason that
using the reference returned by func() has undefined behavior. So both
pieces of code are bad for the same reason.

I suspect that you thought that the inlined function code would not be
treated as if it were enclosed in a separate block, but that would
change the semantics. Objects declared local to the inlined function are
NOT treated as if they were declared in the block that contains the call
to that function - if they were, that would make them much harder to use.

Thread

Inline functions and locals Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-01-12 16:34 +0000
  Re: Inline functions and locals Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-01-12 17:38 +0100
  Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-12 12:47 -0500
  Re: Inline functions and locals Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-01-13 07:00 +0000
    Re: Inline functions and locals "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach@gmail.com> - 2022-01-13 10:45 +0100
      Re: Inline functions and locals Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-01-17 12:55 +0000
        Re: Inline functions and locals David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-01-17 15:14 +0100
        Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-17 10:24 -0800
          Re: Inline functions and locals David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-01-17 19:46 +0100
    Re: Inline functions and locals Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-01-13 11:08 +0100
      Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-13 19:30 -0800
  Re: Inline functions and locals Paavo Helde <eesnimi@osa.pri.ee> - 2022-01-13 12:46 +0200
    Re: Inline functions and locals Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-01-13 15:38 +0000
  Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-13 17:51 -0800
    Re: Inline functions and locals Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-01-14 11:22 +0000
      Re: Inline functions and locals Öö Tiib <ootiib@hot.ee> - 2022-01-14 04:02 -0800
        Re: Inline functions and locals Manfred <invalid@invalid.add> - 2022-01-14 17:30 +0100
          Re: Inline functions and locals Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-01-14 16:49 +0000
        Re: Inline functions and locals Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2022-01-14 16:40 +0000
          Re: Inline functions and locals Öö Tiib <ootiib@hot.ee> - 2022-01-14 11:28 -0800
          Re: Inline functions and locals "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach@gmail.com> - 2022-01-14 20:29 +0100
      Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-14 08:34 -0500
        Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-14 11:26 -0500
          Re: Inline functions and locals David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-01-14 18:47 +0100
      Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-14 08:43 -0800
        Re: Inline functions and locals Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-01-17 05:38 +0000
          Re: Inline functions and locals David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-01-17 08:12 +0100
            Re: Inline functions and locals "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-01-16 23:51 -0800
              Re: Inline functions and locals "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2022-01-16 23:55 -0800
              Re: Inline functions and locals David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-01-17 11:35 +0100
            Re: Inline functions and locals Juha Nieminen <nospam@thanks.invalid> - 2022-01-17 09:50 +0000
              Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-17 14:39 -0500
                Re: Inline functions and locals Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2022-01-17 15:34 -0800
                Re: Inline functions and locals "james...@alumni.caltech.edu" <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-17 15:50 -0800
                Re: Inline functions and locals Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2022-04-25 03:42 -0700
                Re: Inline functions and locals "james...@alumni.caltech.edu" <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-04-25 08:48 -0700
          Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-16 23:53 -0800
            Re: Inline functions and locals Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2022-01-17 15:29 -0800
    Re: Inline functions and locals Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-01-17 12:40 +0100
      Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-17 10:13 -0800
        Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-17 16:15 -0500
          Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-17 16:28 -0800
            Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-17 22:55 -0500
              Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-18 11:32 -0800
                Re: Inline functions and locals James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2022-01-18 19:03 -0500
                Re: Inline functions and locals Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2022-01-18 17:22 -0800
        Re: Inline functions and locals Bonita Montero <Bonita.Montero@gmail.com> - 2022-01-18 09:20 +0100

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