The rules for C++ allow compilers to optimize temporary objects out of existence. As a result, if you call operator*
in a context like this,
Rational a = 10;
Rational b(1, 2);
Rational c = a * b; // operator* is called here
your compilers are allowed to eliminate both the temporary inside operator*
and the temporary returned by operator*
. They can construct the object defined by the return
expression inside the memory allotted for the object c
. If your compilers do this, the total cost of temporary objects as a result of your calling operator*
is zero: no temporaries are created. Instead, you pay for only one constructor call — the one to create c
. Furthermore, you can't do any better than this, because c
is a named object, and named objects can't be eliminated