Is the following assignment operation on a QByteArray reference safe?

[schrute]

I have a function that takes a QByteArray object as input by reference and assigns another object inside, like the following

Result myfunc(QByteArray& bytes)
{
    ....
    bytes = QByteArray(rawData, rawDataSize);
    ....
}


QByteArray byteArray;
myfunc(byteArray);
parse(byteArray);

Is this assignment operation within myfunc safe? I would expect it to be a safe operation for a std::vector but I am not sure about QByteArray (shallow-copy and deep-copy issues).

PS - I would have preferred a return by value but can't change the API

[Christian Ehrlicher]

I don't see a problem here. What should be the problem? If copy on write would change such fundamental things for the user/programmer than it would not be used by Qt. You don't need to think about cow in 99,99% of the time

[schrute]

@Christian-Ehrlicher I incorrectly assumed that QByteArray would always create a deep copy of the data which was not true for QByteArray::fromRawData (documented behaviour, that I didn't read). So just wanted to confirm if this would behave as intended.