Re: invalid use of auto in expression ??

From:
Kevin McCarty <kmccarty@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 8 May 2012 12:06:19 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<950a21f6-d1fd-471d-a25e-bf3ed338acea@g6g2000pbq.googlegroups.com>
On May 8, 11:33 am, mdcb...@gmail.com wrote:

Hello all,

I was wondering if this was legit C++11x

  std::map<std::string, int> m;
  ...

(1) if ((auto bar = m.find("bar")) == m.end()) std::cout << "bar=

 not found\n";

breaking it down in 2 steps keeps my compiler happy:

(2) auto foo = m.find("foo");
     if (foo == m.end()) std::cout << "foo not found\n";

Is this guided by the standard, or a limitation with my compiler?

Thanks


I don't have a chapter and verse to cite, but I don't think the above
form (1) is allowed in either C++ 03 or 11 (neither with "auto" nor
with an actual explicit type). This won't compile either:

if ((int foo = getSomeInt()) == 5) { doSomething(foo); }

Perhaps you're thinking of this form, which is slightly less
featureful but does compile:

if (int foo = getSomeInt()) { doSomething(foo); }

This calls doSomething(foo) if a boolean conversion of the value
assigned to foo from getSomeInt() is true. It's a nice replacement
for

int foo = getSomeInt();
if (foo) { doSomething(foo); }

which keeps the scope of foo better-contained.

So I'd imagine that the following should work in C++ 11 (not tested)

if (auto foo = getSomething()) { doSomething(foo); }

This doesn't help with your particular example, though. On the other
hand, your example isn't using the value of 'bar' anyway, so you could
simply use

if (m.find("bar") == m.end()) std::cout << "bar not found\n";

- Kevin B. McCarty

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