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I've come across this term POD-type a few times.
What does it mean?
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POD stands for Plain Old Data - that is, a class (whether defined with the keyword struct or the keyword class ) without constructors, destructors and virtual members functions.
In computer science and object-oriented programming, a passive data structure (PDS, also termed a plain old data structure, or plain old data, POD) is a term for a record, to contrast with objects.
In C++03, POD was defined in terms of aggregate: a class where every subobject is native or an aggregate is POD. So, by backwards compatibility, a C++0x std::array is POD.
Trivial typesWhen a class or struct in C++ has compiler-provided or explicitly defaulted special member functions, then it is a trivial type. It occupies a contiguous memory area. It can have members with different access specifiers. In C++, the compiler is free to choose how to order members in this situation.
POD stands for Plain Old Data - that is, a class (whether defined with the keyword struct or the keyword class) without constructors, destructors and virtual members functions. Wikipedia's article on POD goes into a bit more detail and defines it as:
A Plain Old Data Structure in C++ is an aggregate class that contains only PODS as members, has no user-defined destructor, no user-defined copy assignment operator, and no nonstatic members of pointer-to-member type.
Greater detail can be found in this answer for C++98/03. C++11 changed the rules surrounding POD, relaxing them greatly, thus necessitating a follow-up answer here.
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