I have code similar to the following:
#include <boost/optional.hpp>
::boost::optional<int> getitem();
int go(int nr)
{
boost::optional<int> a = getitem();
boost::optional<int> b;
if (nr > 0)
b = nr;
if (a != b)
return 1;
return 0;
}
When compiling with GCC 4.7.2 with Boost 1.53, using the following command:
g++ -c -O2 -Wall -DNDEBUG
The following warning is issued:
13:3: warning: ‘((void)& b +4)’ may be used uninitialized in this function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
Apparently, the root problem lies with GCC. See GCC Bugzilla Does anyone know a workaround?
There are two levels of uninitialized analysis in gcc:
-Wuninitialized
: flags variables that are certainly used uninitialized-Wmaybe-uninitialized
: flags variables that are potentially used uninitializedIn gcc (*), -Wall
turns on both levels even though the latter has spurious warnings because the analysis is imperfect. Spurious warnings are a plague, so the simplest way to avoid them is to pass -Wno-maybe-uninitialized
(after -Wall
).
If you still want the warnings, but not have them cause build failure (through -Werror
) you can white list them using -Wno-error=maybe-uninitialized
.
(*) Clang does not activate -Wmaybe-uninitialized
by default precisely because it's very imprecise and has a good number of false positives; I wish gcc followed this guideline too.