QThread's inner workings are irrelevant: they play no role in how the event loops work. When you emit a signal in a QObject that lives in a thread different from the slot's object, the signal will be posted as a QMetaCallEvent to the event queue of the receiving thread. The event loop running in the receiving thread will then act on this event and execute the call into the slot that was connected to the emitted signal.
So, no matter what happens, whatever data you send through the signal will eventually end up as a payload in an instance of QEvent-derived class.
The meat of the issue is when the QMetaCallEvent reaches the event loop and the container gets passed into the slot as an argument. Of course the copy constructors could be called plenty of times along the way. Below is some simple code that demonstrates how many times the copy constructor and default constructor are in fact called
on the elements of the data members of an implicitly shared copy-on-write container (QVector),
on a custom class that stands in for a container.
You'll be pleasantly surprised :)
Since Qt containers are implicitly shared copy-on-write, their copy construction has negligible cost: all that's done is a reference counter is incremented atomically on construction. None of the data members are copied, for example.
Alas, pre-11 C++ shows its ugly side: if the slot code modifies the container in any way, there's no way to pass references to the slot in such a way that would let the compiler know that the original container is not needed anymore. Thus: if the slot receives a const reference to the container, you're guaranteed that no copies will be made. If the slot receives a writeable copy of the container and you modify it, there will be a completely unnecessary copy made since the instance alive at the call site is no longer needed. In C++-11 you'd pass an rvalue reference as a parameter. Passing an rvalue reference in a function call ends the lifetime of the passed object in the caller.
Sample code output:
"Started" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 0
"Created Foo" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 100
"Created Bar" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 100
"Received signal w/const container" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 100
"Received signal w/copy of the container" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 100
"Made a copy" copies: 100 assignments: 1 default instances: 101
"Reset" copies: 0 assignments: 0 default instances: 0
"Received signal w/const class" copies: 2 assignments: 0 default instances: 1
"Received signal w/copy of the class" copies: 3 assignments: 0 default instances: 1
//main.cpp
#include <QtCore>
class Class {
static QAtomicInt m_copies;
static QAtomicInt m_assignments;
static QAtomicInt m_instances;
public:
Class() { m_instances.fetchAndAddOrdered(1); }
Class(const Class &) { m_copies.fetchAndAddOrdered(1); }
Class & operator=(const Class &) { m_assignments.fetchAndAddOrdered(1); return *this; }
static void dump(const QString & s = QString()) {
qDebug() << s << "copies:" << m_copies << "assignments:" << m_assignments << "default instances:" << m_instances;
}
static void reset() {
m_copies = 0;
m_assignments = 0;
m_instances = 0;
}
};
QAtomicInt Class::m_instances;
QAtomicInt Class::m_copies;
QAtomicInt Class::m_assignments;
typedef QVector<Class> Vector;
Q_DECLARE_METATYPE(Vector)
class Foo : public QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
Vector v;
public:
Foo() : v(100) {}
signals:
void containerSignal(const Vector &);
void classSignal(const Class &);
public slots:
void sendContainer() { emit containerSignal(v); }
void sendClass() { emit classSignal(Class()); }
};
class Bar : public QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
Bar() {}
signals:
void containerDone();
void classDone();
public slots:
void containerSlotConst(const Vector &) {
Class::dump("Received signal w/const container");
}
void containerSlot(Vector v) {
Class::dump("Received signal w/copy of the container");
v[99] = Class();
Class::dump("Made a copy");
Class::reset();
Class::dump("Reset");
emit containerDone();
}
void classSlotConst(const Class &) {
Class::dump("Received signal w/const class");
}
void classSlot(Class) {
Class::dump("Received signal w/copy of the class");
emit classDone();
//QThread::currentThread()->quit();
}
};
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
qRegisterMetaType<Vector>("Vector");
qRegisterMetaType<Class>("Class");
Class::dump("Started");
QThread thread;
Foo foo;
Bar bar;
Class::dump("Created Foo");
bar.moveToThread(&thread);
Class::dump("Created Bar");
QObject::connect(&thread, SIGNAL(started()), &foo, SLOT(sendContainer()));
QObject::connect(&foo, SIGNAL(containerSignal(Vector)), &bar, SLOT(containerSlotConst(Vector)));
QObject::connect(&foo, SIGNAL(containerSignal(Vector)), &bar, SLOT(containerSlot(Vector)));
QObject::connect(&bar, SIGNAL(containerDone()), &foo, SLOT(sendClass()));
QObject::connect(&foo, SIGNAL(classSignal(Class)), &bar, SLOT(classSlotConst(Class)));
QObject::connect(&foo, SIGNAL(classSignal(Class)), &bar, SLOT(classSlot(Class)));
QObject::connect(&bar, SIGNAL(classDone()), &thread, SLOT(quit()));
QObject::connect(&thread, SIGNAL(finished()), &a, SLOT(quit()));
thread.start();
a.exec();
thread.wait();
}
#include "main.moc"
