Inline functions?

Useful reading

Also the first item in Scott Meyers Effective C++ explains why you should prefer inline functions to macros.

Quick (related) question... Is the typical C++ compiler (in my case, VC++) clever enough to automatically inline a very simple accessor method (that just returns a private member variable), or would I need to specify 'inline' myself?

Quote:

Original post by Bargaust Is the typical C++ compiler (in my case, VC++) clever enough to automatically inline a very simple accessor method (that just returns a private member variable), or would I need to specify 'inline' myself?

It should be, yes. You could give a 'hint' to the compiler by declaring it inline (or even force it by using __forceinline), but VC should be smart enough to figure that out for itself.

If you define the method in the class body then its inlined.

Not necessarily. It's still just a suggestion to the compiler.

I tend to use 'inline' as a hint to anyone else reading the code rather than the compiler since, as I understand it, the compiler will pretty much do what it wants anyways. Your compiler optimization settings (size vs speed, etc) probably have a bigger influence on whether a function is actually inlined or not than using the keyword in the source code.

Unlike what you may think, "inline" is not just a hint to the compiler.
It's also necessary when you define a function in a header, otherwise you get multiple definitions issues.

Note all member functions defined in the class definition are inline implicitly.