interesting indeed! (constructor question)

[Chaplin27]

hello again!
Am I going crazy...how is it possible for a temporary class object to be created and assigned the current value of the object as such:

Counter temp(*this);

if you didn't declare a constructor that accepts a parameter to receive that argument?? The code works fine too, that's what's freaking me out. ANY insight into this would be awesome...perhaps the this pointer has special abilities I was unaware of...
The only constructor I have is the default...

[grib]

You also have a default copy constructor, assignment operator and destructor. You could do this if you wanted.

Counter temp(*this);
...
*this = temp;

Note also that temp in this case is simply a variable that you don't plan to use for very long, thats not a temporary. A temporary usually refers to an unnamed variable that the compiler creates and that often dies at the first ';'

std::ostream & center(const std::string &s, int cols = 80, std::ostream &os=std::cout) {
    int spaces = (cols-s.length())/2;
    if(spaces > 0) os << std::string(spaces,' ');
    return os << s;
}
...
center("Literal String");

This creates a bunch of tempraries. A temporary std::string is created when we call center with the literal string, a temporary is created for cols-s.length(), and temporary is created when we create the string of spaces. The int "spaces" on the other hand, is just a variable I don't use for very long.

[Hunter2]

If you inherit from the class type you're creating an object of, or the object you're doing the creating from is the same class type as the object you're creating, and assuming you haven't defined any constructors at all for that class, there will be (as grib said) a whole set of constructors and other stuff defined for you by default that will allow you to do what you just said.