xref: /aosp_15_r20/external/eigen/doc/PassingByValue.dox (revision bf2c37156dfe67e5dfebd6d394bad8b2ab5804d4)
1namespace Eigen {
2
3/** \eigenManualPage TopicPassingByValue Passing Eigen objects by value to functions
4
5Passing objects by value is almost always a very bad idea in C++, as this means useless copies, and one should pass them by reference instead.
6
7With %Eigen, this is even more important: passing \ref TopicFixedSizeVectorizable "fixed-size vectorizable Eigen objects" by value is not only inefficient, it can be illegal or make your program crash! And the reason is that these %Eigen objects have alignment modifiers that aren't respected when they are passed by value.
8
9For example, a function like this, where \c v is passed by value:
10
11\code
12void my_function(Eigen::Vector2d v);
13\endcode
14
15needs to be rewritten as follows, passing \c v by const reference:
16
17\code
18void my_function(const Eigen::Vector2d& v);
19\endcode
20
21Likewise if you have a class having an %Eigen object as member:
22
23\code
24struct Foo
25{
26  Eigen::Vector2d v;
27};
28void my_function(Foo v);
29\endcode
30
31This function also needs to be rewritten like this:
32\code
33void my_function(const Foo& v);
34\endcode
35
36Note that on the other hand, there is no problem with functions that return objects by value.
37
38*/
39
40}
41