Is there a difference between copy initialization and direct initialization?

Question

Suppose I have this function:

void my_test()
{
    A a1 = A_factory_func();
    A a2(A_factory_func());

    double b1 = 0.5;
    double b2(0.5);

    A c1;
         


        

Answer 1

First grouping: it depends on what A_factory_func returns. The first line is an example of copy initialization, the second line is direct initialization. If A_factory_func returns an A object then they are equivalent, they both call the copy constructor for A, otherwise the first version creates an rvalue of type A from an available conversion operators for the return type of A_factory_func or appropriate A constructors, and then calls the copy constructor to construct a1 from this temporary. The second version attempts to find a suitable constructor that takes whatever A_factory_func returns, or that takes something that the return value can be implicitly converted to.

Second grouping: exactly the same logic holds, except that built in types don't have any exotic constructors so they are, in practice, identical.

Third grouping: c1 is default initialized, c2 is copy-initialized from a value initialized temporary. Any members of c1 that have pod-type (or members of members, etc., etc.) may not be initialized if the user supplied default constructors (if any) do not explicitly initialize them. For c2, it depends on whether there is a user supplied copy constructor and whether that appropriately initializes those members, but the members of the temporary will all be initialized (zero-initialized if not otherwise explicitly initialized). As litb spotted, c3 is a trap. It's actually a function declaration.