In the tradition of The Zen of Python, I’ve been thinking about pushing for explicit declarations of otherwise implicitly-defined member functions in C++, both in code that I write and in code that I review:

// Instances of this class should not be copied. MyClass(const MyClass&) = delete; MyClass& operator=(const MyClass&) = delete; // We are OK with the default semantics. OtherClass(const OtherClass&) = default; OtherClass& operator=(const OtherClass&) = default; OtherClass(OtherClass&&) = default; OtherClass& operator=(OtherClass&&) = default;

[Background: C++ specifies several member functions that the compiler will implicitly define for you in any class: the default constructor, the copy/move constructor(s), and the copy/move assignment operator(s). I say “implicitly define”, as though that always happens, but there are a number of constraints on when the compiler will do this. For the purposes of the discussion below, I’ll ignore the default constructor bit and focus on the copy/move constructor and assignment operator. (I will also happily ignore all the different variants thereof that can occur, e.g. when the compiler defines MyClass(MyClass&) for you.) I think the arguments apply equally well to the default constructor case, but most classes I deal with tend to either declare their own default constructor or have several user-defined constructors anyway, which prohibit the compiler from implicitly declaring the default constructor.]

I think the argument for = delete is more obvious and less controversial, so I’ll start there. = delete ‘ing functions you don’t want used is part of the API contract of the class. Functions that shouldn’t be used shouldn’t be exposed to the user, and = delete ensures that the compiler won’t implicitly define part of your API surface (and users thereby unknowingly violate API guarantees). The copy constructor/assignment operator are the obvious candidates for = delete , but using = delete for the move constructor/assignment operator makes sense in some cases (e.g. RAII classes). Using = delete gives you pleasant compiler error messages, and it’s clearer than:

private: MyClass(const MyClass&); MyClass& operator=(const MyClass&);

If you’re lucky, there might be a comment to the effect of // Deliberately not defined . I know which code I’d prefer to read. (Using = delete also ensures you don’t accidentally use the not-defined members inside the class itself, then spend a while waiting for the linker errors to tell you about your screw-up.)

= default appears to be a little harder to argue for. “Experienced” programmers always know which functions are provided by the compiler, right?

Understanding whether the compiler implicitly defines something requires looking at the entire class definition (including superclasses) and running a non-trivial decision algorithm. I sure don’t want each reader of the code to do that for two or four different member functions (times superclasses, too), all of which are reasonably important in understanding how a class is intended to be used.

Explicitly declaring what you intend can also avoid performance pitfalls. In reading through the C++ specification to understand when things were implicitly declared, I discovered that the same functions can also be implicitly deleted, including this great note: “When the move constructor is not implicitly declared or explicitly supplied, expressions that otherwise would have invoked the move constructor may instead invoke a copy constructor.” So, if the move constructor was implicitly declared at some point, but then was implicitly deleted through some change, expressions that were previously efficient due to moving would become somewhat less so due to copying. Isn’t C++ great?

Being explicit also avoids the possibility of meaning to define something, but getting tripped up by the finer points of the language:

template<typename T> class MyClass { public: // This does not define a copy constructor for MyClass<T>. template<typename U> MyClass(const MyClass<U>& aOther) : ... { ... } ... };

Comments could serve to notify the reader that we’re OK with the default definition, but if I could choose between encoding something in a place solely intended for humans, or a place both humans and the compiler will understand, I know which one I’d pick.

Tags: c++, code review, code style, mozilla