[STDCXX-1024] ill-formed iostream code code in section 34.2 of User Guide

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 4.2.1
• Fix Version/s: 4.2.2
• Component/s: Documentation
• Severity: Compiler Error
• Assignee: Martin Sebor
• Reporter: Martin Sebor
• Created: 15/Nov/08 17:26
• Updated: 15/Nov/08 17:59
• Resolved: 15/Nov/08 17:59

Description

As mentioned in this post, the example program in section 34.2.3 – Using Pointers or References to Streams of the User Guide is ill-formed:

at the very end of http://stdcxx.apache.org/doc/stdlibug/34-2.html
there is an example of using a reference to create a "copy" of cout.
However this example doesn't initialize the defined reference at once
(which is required in C++) and for this reason doesn't compile with my
gcc 4.2.1.

For convenience here is the example:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::ostream& fr;
  if (argc > 1)
    fr = *(new std::ofstream(argv[1]));
  else
    fr = std::cout;

  fr << "Hello world!" << std::endl;

  if (&fr!=&std::cout)
    delete(&fr);
}