std::accumulate won't' peform sum of elements with std::plus functor

October 24, 2022

I have a class which contains an integer among some other things:

class Foo
{
public:
    Foo() = default;
    Foo(int x)
        :
        x(x)
    {}
    int operator+(const Foo& rhs)
    {
        return x + rhs.x;
    }
private:
    int x;
    float whatever = 0.0f;
};

I also have a vector of these objects:

std::vector<Foo> foos{1, 2, 3, 4};

now, what I wanted to do was to use std::accumulate with the std::plus functor (or maybe some other STL function) to sum the X values of all elements in the vector, here’s what I tried:

int sum = std::accumulate(foos.begin(), foos.end(), 0, std::plus<int>{});

But i’m getting a compiler error

Error C2440: "’initializing’ : cannot convert from ‘type1’ to ‘type2’
‘conversion’ : cannot convert from ‘type1’ to ‘type2’"

what am i doing wrong, how do I go about fixing this?

>Solution :

You are trying to add an int and a Foo with a function that takes two Foos.

You could use a function that adds int to Foo:

// in Foo
friend int operator+(int lhs, const Foo& rhs)
{
    return lhs + rhs.x;
}

Or you could use a function that adds two Foos

// in Foo
Foo operator+(const Foo& rhs)
{
    return { x + rhs.x };
}

// in main
Foo sum = std::accumulate(foos.begin(), foos.end(), Foo(0), std::plus<Foo>{});