Properly initialising variables in modern C++ (C++11 and above), using () or {}?

Question

The C++ reference pages say that () is for value initialisation, {} is for value and aggregate and list initialisation. So, if I just want value initialisation, which one do

Answer 1

Scott Meyers has a fair amount to say about the difference between the two methods of initialization in his book Effective Modern C++.

He summarizes both approaches like this:

Most developers end up choosing one kind of delimiter as a default, using the other only when they have to. Braces-by-default folks are attracted by their unrivaled breadth of applicability, their prohibition of narrowing conversions, and their immunity to C++’s most vexing parse. Such folks understand that in some cases (e.g., creation of a std::vector with a given size and initial element value), parentheses are required. On the other hand, the go-parentheses-go crowd embraces parentheses as their default argument delimiter. They’re attracted to its consistency with the C++98 syntactic tradition, its avoidance of the auto-deduced-a-std::initializer_list problem, and the knowledge that their object creation calls won’t be inadvertently waylaid by std::initializer_list constructors. They concede that sometimes only braces will do (e.g., when creating a container with particular values). There’s no consensus that either approach is better than the other, so my advice is to pick one and apply it consistently.