Encoding problem with std::string_view on macOS

[Jean1995]

I have the following minimal example:

#include "CLI11.hpp"

#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    CLI::App app{"App description"};

    app.add_option("--input", "input option")
     ->default_val("optionA")
     ->check(CLI::IsMember({"optionA", "optionB", "optionC"}));

    CLI11_PARSE(app, argc, argv);

    auto const inputStr = app["--input"]->as<std::string_view>();

    std::cout << inputStr << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

If I run the program without any input arguments on Linux (g++), I get the expected output optionA.

However, if I run it on macOS (clang++), I get the output ����G, so some encoding problems. If I specify an argument via --input, the problem is gone. The problem is also gone by replacing std::string_view with std::string, so this appears to be a bug specific to the usage of std::string_view.

[phlptp]

I can verify this does produce an inconsistent result.
Not entirely sure what to do about it though. The fact that it works on g++ is either an inconsistent fluke or some internal compiler magic.

as<T>() when no arguments have been passed does some processing on the default_str as a temporary and does a conversion to get the results in the desired type. String_view is a view on a string so in this case is just creating a view of a temporary which is undefined behavior, as seen by sometimes working, sometimes not. When you have passed the variable it is stored internally so a view of it works fine.

I need to think a bit to see if there is a way to make this work. I agree it is an inconsistency in the API for this not to work, but not entirely sure it should work or we need to make the fail more explicit. stay tuned.

[phlptp]

There are a couple different ways I see to fix this. They all have some drawbacks.
The first is to make one of the internal results arrays mutable. Then when a results method is called if no arguments have been passed then it gets copied to the internal array. This internal array is already used for that purpose so add no new structure and doesn't impact existing operations in any way also doesn't add any computation. The downside is there is now a mutable structure and in a few select cases around the operations, this method is now not thread compatible, and internal things can change if the same method is executed on multiple threads could cause a race condition. This is not a race condition that affects state.

The other method would involve executing part of the processing on all options all the time, instead of just as needed. This gets around the race condition but does add extra computation that in most cases is unnecessary.

Not entirely sure which method is preferred.