clang-tidy - bugprone-misleading-setter-of-reference — Extra Clang Tools 21.1.8 documentation

# Extra Clang Tools 21.1.8 documentation

## clang-tidy - bugprone-misleading-setter-of-reference

# bugprone-misleading-setter-of-reference

Finds setter-like member functions that take a pointer parameter and set a reference member of the same class with the pointed value.

The check detects member functions that take a single pointer parameter, and contain a single expression statement that dereferences the parameter and assigns the result to a data member with a reference type.

The fact that a setter function takes a pointer might cause the belief that an internal reference (if it would be a pointer) is changed instead of the pointed-to (or referenced) value.

Example:

    class MyClass {
      int &InternalRef;  // non-const reference member
    public:
      MyClass(int &Value) : InternalRef(Value) {}

      // Warning: This setter could lead to unintended behaviour.
      void setRef(int *Value) {
        InternalRef = *Value;  // This assigns to the referenced value, not changing what InternalRef references.
      }
    };

    int main() {
      int Value1 = 42;
      int Value2 = 100;
      MyClass X(Value1);

      // This might look like it changes what InternalRef references to,
      // but it actually modifies Value1 to be 100.
      X.setRef(&Value2);
    }

Possible fixes:

  - Change the parameter type of the “set” function to non-pointer type (for example, a const reference).

  - Change the type of the member variable to a pointer and in the “set” function assign a value to the pointer (without dereference).