what is an empty class,why the size of an empty class is non zero value?Is it possible to create objects to empty class

Question

3.32/5 (4 votes)

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C++

class empty
{
};
int main()
{
empty obj;
cout<<size(obj);
return 0;
}

Posted 1-Oct-14 19:05pm

Member 11123171

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 2-Oct-14 1:15am

What is that, "size of a class"? You are showing a size of some object. :-)
What is the size you found, 1 byte?
Yes, you can create objects of an empty class. Perhaps, just because of its emptiness, some placeholder byte is needed.

In fact, this is a pretty interesting question; I voted my 5.

—SA

[no name] 2-Oct-14 2:51am

Sergey - the question is answered by the code given.

Shouldn't that be sizeof, not size?

Richard MacCutchan 2-Oct-14 4:03am

A class will always have some basic control data so its size will never be zero. And, yes, you can create objects of an empty class, but they will not be much use.

jsolutions_uk 2-Oct-14 4:07am

There is a good explanation
here.

As I read it ... An "empty" object has to have some size as if it was 0 size, one would not be able to use pointer arithmetic on arrays of an empty object .... or something along those lines :)

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markkuk · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-02T03:01:00

Solution 1

Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of the C++ language, answers the question here: Why is the size of an empty class not zero?[^]

Posted 2-Oct-14 3:01am

markkuk

v2

Comments

nv3 2-Oct-14 9:17am

Good link, thanks!

CPallini 2-Oct-14 9:51am

5.