Re: reference to non-const temporary

From:
ee231@cam.ac.uk (Ethan Eade)
Newsgroups:
comp.std.c++
Date:
Thu, 27 Jul 2006 03:55:34 GMT
Message-ID:
<I9ednb6up54NmFXZnZ2dnUVZ8smdnZ2d@bt.com>
Greg Herlihy wrote:

The compiler should ignore the operator Foo&() conversion method when
converting a Foo to a Foo&, so whether the method is commented in or
out should make no difference to the compiler. Since a temporary cannot
be passed as a non-const reference parameter, the use() function call
should not compile successfully in both cases. (=A712.3.2/1 prohibits a
conversion method from being called to convert an object to a reference
to the object's type.)


Thanks -- so g++ 4.01 is wrong in this case.

I'm curious -- why aren't temporaries allowed to be passed as non-const
references? It seems slightly arbitrary, since non-const methods can be
called on them anyway. Surely such temporaries are fully constructed
objects. What's the rationale? It seems the restriction is trivially
circumvented using operator=():

struct Foo {};

Foo make() { return Foo(); }

void use(Foo& foo) { }

int main()
{
     use(make()); // Fails, as discussed above
     use(Foo() = make()); // Compiles
}

Thanks,
Ethan

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