Question

If I pass the following code through my GCC 4.7 snapshot, it tries to copy the unique_ptrs into the vector.

#include <vector>
#include <memory>

int main() {
    using move_only = std::unique_ptr<int>;
    std::vector<move_only> v { move_only(), move_only(), move_only() };
}

Obviously that cannot work because std::unique_ptr is not copyable:

error: use of deleted function ‘std::unique_ptr<_Tp, _Dp>::unique_ptr(const std::unique_ptr<_Tp, _Dp>&) [with _Tp = int; _Dp = std::default_delete; std::unique_ptr<_Tp, _Dp> = std::unique_ptr]’

Is GCC correct in trying to copy the pointers from the initializer list?

Answer 1

The synopsis of <initializer_list> in 18.9 makes it reasonably clear that elements of an initializer list are always passed via const-reference. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any way of using move-semantic in initializer list elements in the current revision of the language.

Specifically, we have:

typedef const E& reference;
typedef const E& const_reference;

typedef const E* iterator;
typedef const E* const_iterator;

const E* begin() const noexcept; // first element
const E* end() const noexcept; // one past the last element