This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 114a. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-04-18

1997. Placement new and previous initialization

Given the following example,

  #include <new>

  int main() {
    unsigned char buf[sizeof(int)] = {};
    int *ip = new (buf) int;
    return *ip; // 0 or undefined?
  }

Should the preceding initializsation of the buffer carry over to the value of *ip? According to 6.7.4 [basic.indet] paragraph 1,

When storage for an object with automatic or dynamic storage duration is obtained, the object has an indeterminate value, and if no initialization is performed for the object, that object retains an indeterminate value until that value is replaced (7.6.19 [expr.ass]).

In this case, no new storage is being obtained for the int object created by the new-expression.