Question

I am searching for some help in next situation:
I have some class and some method in it, syntax is like this:

class SomeClass {  
    public:  
            void doSomething(int *a);  
};

So I want to call this method like

SomeClass::doSomething({ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 });

Is it possible in any language?
Any (C++, C, obj-c, obj-c++) implementation is welcome!
I know that this initialization block is a body of array, like

int *a = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 };
SomeClass::doSomething(a);

But interface will look great, I think, if there will be no temp variables before function calls (as we don’t need to know the type of parameter in class-client). So, is there any chance to make this?

Answer 1

This is about C++11 initializer lists (section 18.9).

void foo (std :: initializer_list <int> inputs) {
    for (auto i : inputs) {
        // ...
    }
}

foo ({10, 20, 30});

Only the compiler can create an initializer list, but you can treat it like a standard STL-style container with begin(), end(), size(), and random-access iterators.

std::vector (and I expect some other containers) can now be constructed with initializer lists, so

std :: vector <std :: string> foo {"a", "b"};

is equivalent to

std :: vector <std :: string> foo;
foo .push_back ("a");
foo .push_back ("b");

except that it may perform fewer allocations. Note that the const char* have been turned into std::string automagically.