Difference between creating object with () or without

Question

i just run into the problem

error: request for member ‘show’ in ‘myWindow’, which is of non-class type ‘MainGUIWindow()’

when trying to compile a simple qt-application:

#include <QApplication>
#include "gui/MainGUIWindow.h"


int main( int argc, char** argv )
{
  QApplication app( argc, argv );


  MainGUIWindow myWindow();
  myWindow.show();


  return app.exec();
}

I solved this by replacing

MainGUIWindow myWindow(); 

by

MainGUIWindow myWindow;

but I don't understand the difference. My question: What is the difference?

Regards, Dirk

Answer 1

The other answers correctly state that the parentheses version is actually a function declaration. To understand it intuitively, suppose you wrote MainGUIWindow f(); Looks more like a function, doesn't it? :) The more interesting question is what is the difference between

MainGUIWindow* p = new MainGUIWindow;

and

MainGUIWindow* p = new MainGUIWindow();

The version with parentheses is called value-initialization, whereas the version without is called default-initialization. For non-POD classes there is no difference between the two. For POD-structs, however, value-initialization involves setting all members to 0,

my2c

Addition: In general, if some syntactic construct can be interpreted both as a declaration and something else, the compiler always resolves the ambiguity in favor of the declaration.

Answer 2

The following:

MainGUIWindow myWindow();

declares a function that takes no arguments and returns MainGUIWindow. I.e. myWindow is a function name.

MainGUIWindow myWindow;

on the other hand creates an object myWindow of type MainGUIWindow.

Answer 3

The difference is, that

MainGUIWindow myWindow(); 

declares function myWindow, which takes no parameters and returns MainGUIWindow, whereas

MainGUIWindow myWindow; 

creates new object of type MainGUIWindow, calling it's default constructor.

Answer 4

One of the guidelines for C++ compilers, in order to resolve code ambiguities, is: when something can be a function declaration, it is a function declaration. So when the compiler sees:

MainGUIWindow myWindow();

It understands you are declaring a function called myWindow, that takes no parameters and returns a MainGUIWindow. Obviously this is not what you want.

Just remove the parenthesis and you will be fine:

MainGUIWindow myWindow; // Create an object called myWindow, of type MainGUIWindow

Answer 5

There is no real problems with the situation you have described. You remove the parentheses and bingo! it works.

The "most vexing parse" is a much bigger issue when it takes a single parameter and you want to pass in a temporary, eg

class Foo
{
public:
 explicit Foo( const Bar& bar );
};

Foo foo( Bar() );

will not create an instance of a Foo but will also declare a function that takes a function-pointer, and this one really does often sting you.

Answer 6

In C++ every expression that looks like a function declaration is a declaration of a function. Consider more complex sample that in your question:

#include <iostream>

struct X
{
  X( int value ) : x(value) {}
  int x;
};

struct Y
{
  Y( const X& x ) : y(x.x) {}
  int y;
};

int main()
{
  int test = 10;
  Y var( X(test) );                 // 1
  std::cout << var.y << std::endl;  // 2

  return 0;
}

At first glance (1) is a declaration of the local variable var which should be initialized with a temporary of a type X. But this looks like a function declaration for a compiler and you will get an error in (2):

 error: request for member ‘y’ in ‘var’, which is of non-class type ‘Y(X)’

The compiler considers that (1) is the function with name var:

Y                var(             X                     test            );
^- return value  ^-function name  ^-type of an argument ^-argument name

Now, how to say to the compiler that you do not want to declare a function? You could use additional parentheses as follows:

Y var( (X(test)) );  

In your case MainGUIWindow myWindow() for the compiler looks like function declaration:

MainGUIWindow    myWindow(        void                  )
^- return value  ^-function name  ^-type of an argument