Temporary object omits constructor

[Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus]

Hello all,

I just tried to easily show how many temporary objects get created in my
program. I created a test application like this one:

#include <iostream>

struct A {
        static int c, d;
        A() { ++c; }
        ~A() { ++d; }
        void operator+=(const A&) { }
        A operator+(const A&) { return *this; }
};

int A::c = 0;
int A::d = 0;

int main() {
        A a, b, c;

        a = b + c;
        //a = b;
        //a += c;

        std::cout << A::c << " " << A::d << std::endl;
}

Whenever an object of class type A is created a counter is incremented.
So when I compile this application
(g++ -Wall -Wextra -O0 -ggdb2 -o test test.cpp) and run it I suspected
to get an output like this one: 4 1 (three objects plus one temporary
which gets destructed before std::cout).
But the actual result was: 3 1

The assembler output (i386) looks like this (without iostream etc):

gdb disas main:
0x080483d4 <main+0>:    lea    ecx,[esp+0x4]
0x080483d8 <main+4>:    and    esp,0xfffffff0
0x080483db <main+7>:    push   DWORD PTR [ecx-0x4]
0x080483de <main+10>:   push   ebp
0x080483df <main+11>:   mov    ebp,esp
0x080483e1 <main+13>:   push   ecx
0x080483e2 <main+14>:   sub    esp,0x24
0x080483e5 <main+17>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x6]
0x080483e8 <main+20>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x080483eb <main+23>:   call   0x804845c <A>
0x080483f0 <main+28>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x7]
0x080483f3 <main+31>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x080483f6 <main+34>:   call   0x804845c <A>
0x080483fb <main+39>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x8]
0x080483fe <main+42>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x08048401 <main+45>:   call   0x804845c <A>
0x08048406 <main+50>:   lea    edx,[ebp-0x5]
0x08048409 <main+53>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x8]
0x0804840c <main+56>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x8],eax
0x08048410 <main+60>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x7]
0x08048413 <main+63>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x4],eax
0x08048417 <main+67>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],edx
0x0804841a <main+70>:   call   0x8048480 <_ZN1AplERKS_>
0x0804841f <main+75>:   sub    esp,0x4
0x08048422 <main+78>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x5]
0x08048425 <main+81>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x08048428 <main+84>:   call   0x804846e <~A>
0x0804842d <main+89>:   lea    eax,[ebp-0x8]
0x08048430 <main+92>:   mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x08048433 <main+95>:   call   0x804846e <~A>
0x08048438 <main+100>:  lea    eax,[ebp-0x7]
0x0804843b <main+103>:  mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x0804843e <main+106>:  call   0x804846e <~A>
0x08048443 <main+111>:  lea    eax,[ebp-0x6]
0x08048446 <main+114>:  mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax
0x08048449 <main+117>:  call   0x804846e <~A>
0x0804844e <main+122>:  mov    eax,0x0
0x08048453 <main+127>:  mov    ecx,DWORD PTR [ebp-0x4]
0x08048456 <main+130>:  leave  
0x08048457 <main+131>:  lea    esp,[ecx-0x4]
0x0804845a <main+134>:  ret

Only three times the constructor is called but four times the destructor
and a magic call to "0x8048480 <_ZN1AplERKS_>".

Can someone explain these results?

Best regards
Stefan