Calling constructors in c++ without new

Question

Both lines are in fact correct but do subtly different things.

The first line creates a new object on the stack by calling a constructor of the format Thing(const char*).

The second one is a bit more complex. It essentially does the following

1. Create an object of type Thing using the constructor Thing(const char*)
2. Create an object of type Thing using the constructor Thing(const Thing&)
3. Call ~Thing() on the object created in step #1

I assume with the second line you actually mean:

Thing *thing = new Thing("uiae");

which would be the standard way of creating new dynamic objects (necessary for dynamic binding and polymorphism) and storing their address to a pointer. Your code does what JaredPar described, namely creating two objects (one passed a const char*, the other passed a const Thing&), and then calling the destructor (~Thing()) on the first object (the const char* one).

By contrast, this:

Thing thing("uiae");

creates a static object which is destroyed automatically upon exiting the current scope.

The compiler may well optimize the second form into the first form, but it doesn't have to.

#include <iostream>

class A
{
    public:
        A() { std::cerr << "Empty constructor" << std::endl; }
        A(const A&) { std::cerr << "Copy constructor" << std::endl; }
        A(const char* str) { std::cerr << "char constructor: " << str << std::endl; }
        ~A() { std::cerr << "destructor" << std::endl; }
};

void direct()
{
    std::cerr << std::endl << "TEST: " << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
    A a(__FUNCTION__);
    static_cast<void>(a); // avoid warnings about unused variables
}

void assignment()
{
    std::cerr << std::endl << "TEST: " << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
    A a = A(__FUNCTION__);
    static_cast<void>(a); // avoid warnings about unused variables
}

void prove_copy_constructor_is_called()
{
    std::cerr << std::endl << "TEST: " << __FUNCTION__ << std::endl;
    A a(__FUNCTION__);
    A b = a;
    static_cast<void>(b); // avoid warnings about unused variables
}

int main()
{
    direct();
    assignment();
    prove_copy_constructor_is_called();
    return 0;
}

Output from gcc 4.4:

TEST: direct
char constructor: direct
destructor

TEST: assignment
char constructor: assignment
destructor

TEST: prove_copy_constructor_is_called
char constructor: prove_copy_constructor_is_called
Copy constructor
destructor
destructor

Quite simply, both lines create the object on the stack, rather than on the heap as 'new' does. The second line actually involves a second call to a copy constructor, so it should be avoided (it also needs to be corrected as indicated in the comments). You should use the stack for small objects as much as possible since it is faster, however if your objects are going to survive for longer than the stack frame, then it's clearly the wrong choice.

I played a bit with it and the syntax seems to get quite strange when a constructor takes no arguments. Let me give an example:

#include <iostream> 

using namespace std;

class Thing
{
public:
    Thing();
};

Thing::Thing()
{
    cout << "Hi" << endl;
}

int main()
{
    //Thing myThing(); // Does not work
    Thing myThing; // Works

}

so just writing Thing myThing w/o brackets actually calls the constructor, while Thing myThing() makes the compiler thing you want to create a function pointer or something ??!!