Why bool doesn't have destructor?

Question

AFAIK, C++ offers destructors for primitive types for consistency reason. But that doesn't work for bool type.

bool*   vptr;
vptr->~bool();  // Error. "Expected a class name after '~' to name a destructor"

int8_t* vptr;
vptr->~int8_t(); // No error.

What's wrong with my code? Here's my compiler version.

Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin12.5.0
Thread model: posix

"C++ offers destructors for primitive types" - no, it doesn't. — Mat, Nov 10 '13 at 19:45
User uk4321: I would comment that http://stackoverflow.com/a/456339/2925619 answers this question. — user2533527, Nov 10 '13 at 19:49

Nawaz · Answer 1 · 2013-11-10T19:59:01.890

7

Because bool, like all other builtin types, is not a class type, though it works for typedefs and template arguments because the Standard allows it to enable generic programming.

template<typename T>
void destruct(T const & obj)
{
     obj.~T();
}

You can call this function for builtin types as well! :-)

edited Nov 10 '13 at 19:59

answered Nov 10 '13 at 19:45

Nawaz

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Why bool doesn't have destructor?

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