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N/RVO works by (at the machine language level, of course) rewriting the function signature to return void and take an extra pointer parameter, which is written to before returning. If you're returning a newly-constructed object, the compiler can rewrite that into calling the constructor on the pointer, but if you're returning a named object, the class may have a non-trivial destructor that needs to run after the move, such that it's not possible to rewrite uses of the local object into uses of the pointer.

I'm not too confident on that last part, because such an implementation would mess with semantics in case of an exception, so anyone feel free to correct me on that.

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I'm sorry, this comment is completely wrong.

NRVO does not affect the ABI of the function. It cannot affect the ABI, for whether or not it kicks in depends on the body of the function, and affecting the ABI would make it impossible to use it if only the declaration appears in a header.

The correct explanation is this:

In C++, classes with nontrivial destructors or copy/move constructors are considered nontrivial for the purposes of calls and are passed via pointers rather than via value. By passing via pointer, the class has a stable address and thus 'this' pointer. Returning such a class means the caller allocates the storage for the class on the stack before calling the function, and passes the pointer to that storage to the function as an extra parameter. This is based solely on the definition of the class itself; this happens whether or not NRVO kicks in.

Usually, when you declare a variable, the abstract machine of C++ requires you to construct a new object and call the copy/move constructors or assignment operators and the destructors at various times as appropriate. With nontrivial versions of these special functions, it is possible to observe whether or not they were called (these things still happen with trivial classes, but it's not so easy to observe). Returning a value requires constructing the storage space for that object--with all the attendant abstract machinery that involves.

What NRVO does is to say that, under certain conditions, rather than constructing storage space for a given variable that is normally required, the storage space that is allocated for the return value by the ABI is used instead. In essence, you are promoting a given variable to the return value hence the name 'Named Return Value Optimization'. What makes this annoying to implement is that you have to track at the AST level, before doing any code generation at all, whether or not a given variable is eligible for NRVO, and then use that information to control the code generation for allocating storage space.

Despite its name, NRVO is not actually an 'optimization' in the compiler. The optimizer plays no role in it, since the optimizer is fulfilling the requirements of the abstract machine. Instead, it is a set of conditions that allows the frontend to omit calls to copy constructors, etc. under specific circumstances.

> Despite its name, NRVO is not actually an 'optimization' in the compiler. The optimizer plays no role in it, since the optimizer is fulfilling the requirements of the abstract machine. Instead, it is a set of conditions that allows the frontend to omit calls to copy constructors, etc. under specific circumstances.

That's semantics. The way the compiler is structured and in which component the transformation is implemented has no bearing on whether something is an optimization.

> N/RVO works by (at the machine language level, of course) rewriting the function signature to return void and take an extra pointer parameter

This sounds wrong, are you sure? Would you mind demonstrating with an example on godbolt? Whether NRVO applies or not, the ABI should be the same, AFAIK.

Yes, of that I'm sure. This optimization is only possible if the compiler has control of both sides of a call. If the function may be callable from other translation units or modules I imagine it generates a thin wrapper that's externally callable.

The optimization is often possible even if the computer does not see the call, because most (all?) ABIs have always required hidden pointer parameters for class types with non-trivial destructors.

https://godbolt.org/z/9WvnEvEYh Note how `std::unique_ptr<int>` effectively passed as a `int**`; and that the by-value unique_ptr is not destroyed at the end of the function -- destroying parameters is instead the caller's job (and commonly only happens at the end of the full expression containing the call -- though this choice is implementation-defined). But that can only work if the caller can see the updated value of the parameter (to avoid double-free for `clear`) -> thus the need to pass the parameter by hidden pointer.

I don't know why I wrote the comment about parameters earlier -- (N)RVO is about return values. Those have a different reason for being passed behind a hidden pointer: the class type might have self-referencing pointers, so there must be an explicit move/copy constructor call whenever it changes address, to give the class an opportunity to update those pointers. This cannot work when returning in a register: the callee doesn't know the target address, and the caller doesn't the source address, so neither can call the move constructor. Thus, all ABIs must pass a pointer (or let caller+callee agree on a memory location in some other way) for types that aren't trivially copyable.

Yes, it works exactly like this, this is a demo on godbolt [0]. rdi stores the pointer in both cases, makeS1() uses RVO, makeS2() takes it explicitly and constructs with placement new.

I will say before testing this i didn't realize the RVO calling convention was to return the pointer you pass in, but apparently so. If makeS2() returned void, it's just a tail call to the constructor, but makeS1() has to spill rbx and use it to save the pointer.

[0]: https://godbolt.org/z/ovd1n99P8

No, all you're showing in that example is that a pointer is passed as part of the ABI. You're not showing that RVO relates to that in any way whatsoever. If you write the same function in a manner that (N)RVO can't kick in, does the pointer no longer get passed?

The reason this should sound dubious is that you're suggesting the caller needs to know the callee's body in order to know how to call it, but it should be possible for the two to be compiled entirely independently, and in fact mutual recursions should be fine too. After all, the callee knows where the return value has to land either way, and the caller similarly knows where to expect it, regardless of when/how the object is constructed or destroyed.

Fair enough, I don't know the C++ ABI to this extent.

>rewriting the function signature to return void and take an extra pointer parameter, which is written to before returning

This is completely unrelated to RVO. Every non-trivial class is returned via pointers to caller-allocated storage under the Itanium ABI. Period.

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