What are POD types in C++?

POD stands for Plain Old Data – that is, a class (whether defined with the keyword struct or the keyword class) without constructors, destructors and virtual members functions. Wikipedia’s article on POD goes into a bit more detail and defines it as:

A Plain Old Data Structure in C++ is an aggregate class that contains only PODS as members, has no user-defined destructor, no user-defined copy assignment operator, and no nonstatic members of pointer-to-member type.

Greater detail can be found in this answer for C++98/03. C++11 changed the rules surrounding POD, relaxing them greatly, thus necessitating a follow-up answer here.

Leave a Comment