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Response to proposed coding standard:<br>
<ul>
<li>All classes should declare a <strong>copy constructor</strong>,
an
<strong>assignment operator</strong> from its own type, a default <strong>constructor</strong>
and a <strong>destructor.</strong> Any that are not used should be
declared private and not defined.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>Comment: I suggest a change from "a default constructor
and a destructor" to "at least one constructor and destructor". It is
not always appropriate to have a default constructor, and default
constructors are only <i>automatically</i> generated if there are no
non-trivial constructors defined. This rule does not state whether
they must be public or not. There are cases such as friend factory
classes where having no public constructors actually makes the most
sense. But regardless, there should not be a rule that says every
class must have a default constructor. Even though it is possible, it
suggest semantics to the user of the class that may actually not make
any sense.<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li>All classes which might possibly be
used as base classes must define a virtual destructor.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>I think modern compilers flag this as an error. If so,
we don't need a rule about it.<br>
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</blockquote>
</blockquote>
-Richard Jones<br>
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<br>
Mark M. Ito wrote:
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:4AB24AB0.7060603@jlab.org">
<pre wrap="">Folks,
Matt Shepherd sent this to me last week. I think it serves as an example
of what we might want to adopt for a coding standard and can serve as a
starting point for a discussion. Read it over and send out your comments
to the list or to me if so moved. We will discuss the idea of standards
at a future Offline meeting, of course.
-- Mark
</pre>
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