Rob Stewart wrote:
I fail to see how relying on behavior of the language is not having sympathy for those reading the code. This is akin to explicitly invoking a default base ctor in an initializer list in my mind.
Explicit is good. Consistent is also good. Consider: struct base { double a; }; struct derived1 : base { derived1() : base() {} }; struct derived2 : base { derived2() {} }; Which of the 2 derived classes do you think is more subtle? derived1, which initialized base so member a == 0.0, or derived2 which does not initialize base, so a could be anything including a troublesome NaN. Which would you rather call attention to by breaking with convention? And how many 'typical' C++ programmers do you believe are even aware of the difference? Relying (un-necessarily) on subtlety in the language, and trying to second guess whether it was intended or not, is generally a hard way to share code and an invitation for trouble in a shared-source environment. This thread is also heading off topic for a Boost list and would be more at home in comp.lang.c++.moderated. AlisdairM