Can you capture arrays in a lambda?

c++, c++11, lambda

Solution

Yes, you can. The Standard says that (5.1.2p21):

When the lambda-expression is evaluated, the entities that are captured by copy are used to direct-initialize each corresponding non-static data member of the resulting closure object. (For array members, the array elements are direct-initialized in increasing subscript order.)

which makes it clear that a lambda can capture an array by copy.

Problem

I'm in a situation in a multithreaded environment where I have a thread that receives data from a socket, and I want to send that data into a messaging queue. For instance, something like this: ``` char buf[N]; size_t len = ::recv(buf, ...); queue.send([buf,len] { //stuff }); ``` But that won't work since `buf` could go out of scope, or get overwritten by the next `::recv()`. Now I COULD copy it into a `string`/`std::vector`/whatever and pass THAT thing by value: ``` char buf[N]; size_t len = ::recv(buf, ...); std::string my_data(buf, len); queue.send([my_data](){ /* stuff */ }); ``` But there I'm incurring an extra copy, right? Is there a way to get that same functionality without the extra overhead?

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