Question

I wrote a small coordinate class to handle both int and float coordinates.

template <class T>
class vector2
{
public:
    vector2() { memset(this, 0, sizeof(this)); }
    T x;
    T y;
};

Then in main() I do:

vector2<int> v;

But according to my MSVC debugger, only the x value is set to 0, the y value is untouched. Ive never used sizeof() in a template class before, could that be whats causing the trouble?

Answer 1

No don’t use memset — it zeroes out the size of a pointer (4 bytes on my x86 Intel machine) bytes starting at the location pointed by this. This is a bad habit: you will also zero out virtual pointers and pointers to virtual bases when using memset with a complex class. Instead do:

template <class T>
class vector2
{
public:
    // use initializer lists
    vector2() : x(0), y(0) {}
    T x;
    T y;
};