Move Semantics Explained

Understanding Move Semantics

Move semantics is a concept introduced in C++11 that is quite hard to grasp, even by experienced programmers. Therefore, we will try to give you an in-depth explanation of how it works, when the compiler utilizes it, and, most importantly, why it is needed. Essentially, the reason C++ even has the concept of move semantics, whereas most other languages don’t, is a result of it being a value-based language, as discussed before. If C++ did not have move semantics built-in, the advantages of value-based semantics would get lost in many cases, and programmers would have to perform one of the following trade-offs:

• Performing redundant deep-cloning operations with high-performance costs
• Using pointers for objects like Java does, losing the robustness of value semantics
• Performing error-prone swapping operations at the cost of readability

We do not want any of these, so let’s have a look at how move semantics help us.