Exclusive state access, I -- Andrzej Krzemieński

Value semantics is a way of structuring programs around what values mean, not where objects live, and C++ is explicitly designed to support this model. In a value-semantic design, objects are merely vehicles for communicating state, while identity, address, and physical representation are intentionally irrelevant.

Exclusive state access, I

by Andrzej Krzemieński

From the article:

Value semantics is a way of organizing your programs, which C++ supports and endorses. Its key characteristics in a nutshell:

1. Throughout its lifetime an object (via its type and special member functions) is used to represent a value.
2. Different parts of the program communicate values via objects. While the value matters, objects themselves (their address, their sizeof) do not.
3. Object’s value is isolated from other objects’ values.

This begs the question, what is value, but we will not answer it. First, because it is difficult, and maybe impossible. It is pretty clear what value objects of type int represent. It is fairly uncontroversial what value is represented by vector<int>, once we accept that the value representation need not fit into the sizeof of the object, but can spread across other memory locations and resources, and that vector’s capacity is not part of this value, even though it is part of its state. But there are things like std::mutex where naming the value is tricky.

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