C++17 constexpr string parsing

Question

_{Sorry that this will be a long post, but I feel like you need all of the code to see what's going on.}

---

So, I have been experimenting with an idea for compile time string to data structure parser. Think of something like a regex, where the string is "compiled" into a data structure at compile time but executed at runtime (so long as the input string is a constant of course). But I've run into an issue that I don't quite understand what's wrong:

Basically, my design is a 2 pass parser:

• Pass 1: determine how many "opcodes" are in the input string
• Pass 2: return an array whose size is determined by Pass 1, and filled in with the "opcodes"

Here's what things look like:

// a class to wrap string constants
class constexpr_string {
public:
    template <size_t N>
    constexpr constexpr_string(const char (&s)[N]) : string_(s), size_(N - 1) {}
public:
    constexpr size_t size() const     { return size_; }
    constexpr size_t capacity() const { return size(); }
    constexpr size_t empty() const    { return size() != 0; }
public:
    constexpr char operator[](size_t n) const { return string_[n]; }
private:
    const char *string_;
    size_t      size_;
};

// would have loved to use std::array, but ran into an issue so..
// wrapped in a struct so we can return it
template <class T, size_t N>
struct constexpr_array {
    T array[N] = {};
};

struct opcode { /* not relevant */ };

template <size_t N>
constexpr constexpr_array<opcode, N> compile_string(constexpr_string fmt) {
    constexpr_array<opcode, N> compiled;
    /* fill in compiled_format */
    return compiled;
}

constexpr size_t calculate_size(constexpr_string fmt) {
    size_t size = 0;
    /* calculate size */
    return size;
}

#if 0
// NOTE: Why doesn't **This** work?
constexpr int test(constexpr_string input) {

    constexpr size_t compiled_size = calculate_size(input);
    constexpr auto compiled_format = compile_string<compiled_size>(input);
    return 0;
}
#endif

int main() {
    // NOTE: when this works...
    constexpr char input[] = "...";
    constexpr size_t compiled_size = calculate_size(input);
    constexpr auto compiled = compile_string<compiled_size>(input);
    execute(compiled); // run it!
}

So far so good!

The problem arises when I try to just wrap those 2 lines into a function :-/. I don't understand why the same exact code works in main, but if I just try to pass the same constexpr object to another function, I start getting errors about things not being constexpr.

---

Here's the error message:

main.cpp: In function ‘constexpr int test(constexpr_string)’:
main.cpp:258:55: error: ‘input’ is not a constant expression
  constexpr size_t compiled_size = calculate_size(input);
                                                       ^
main.cpp:259:70: error: no matching function for call to ‘compile_string<compiled_size>(constexpr_string&)’
  constexpr auto compiled_format = compile_string<compiled_size>(input);
                                                                      ^
main.cpp:60:45: note: candidate: template<long unsigned int N> constexpr constexpr_array<opcode, N> compile_string(constexpr_string)
 constexpr constexpr_array<opcode, N> compile_string(constexpr_string fmt) {
                                             ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
main.cpp:60:45: note:   template argument deduction/substitution failed:

Answer 1

Let's reduce this:

constexpr void f(int i) {
    constexpr int j = i; // error
}

int main() {
    constexpr int i = 0;
    constexpr int j = i; // OK
}

Function parameters are never constexpr, so i inside f is not a constant expression and can't be used to initialize j. Once you pass something through a function parameter, the constexpr-ness is lost.