Re: Rvalue-references, binding and conversions

From:
Anthony Williams <anthony.ajw@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:55:59 CST
Message-ID:
<u1vx4k70q.fsf@gmail.com>
Dragan Milenkovic <dragan@plusplus.rs> writes:

Tested with latest GCC. I made an assumption that they did it right.
Here it is...

struct Foo {
    Foo(const Foo &);
};

struct Bar {
    Bar(const Foo &);
};

const Foo && func();

int main() {
    Foo && foo = func(); // #1 fails
    Bar && bar = func(); // #2 succeeds
}

#1 fails because we cannot bind a const rvalue to non-const reference.
#2 succeeds by creating a temporary of type Bar.


Yes.

From the compiler's (technical) point of view, I understand...

#1 has different const-ness so it fails. #2 has different types so
it looks for a conversion, creates a temporary, which can be
bound to a rvalue-reference.

But from my own point of view, #1 and #2 are different only in the
resulting type they want to capture. I would like them both to either
succeed or fail. I'm guessing if templates were in the game,
it would create even more confusion for the developer.
Lvalue-reference don't have this kind of problem.

So, for this to equal, we need:
    Foo && foo = Foo(func());
    Bar && bar = func();

Why not make a temporary in #1 also?
It prefers to convert to another type, but not to its own?!?


That's the same way things have always worked in C++: you get similar
behaviour with normal lvalue references:

const Foo& func();

Foo& foo=func(); // fails
Bar const& bar=func(); // succeeds, binds reference to temporary.

The compiler will not generate a temporary or perform a conversion to
bind a value of type T to a reference to that type. If the
const-volatile qualification doesn't match, it won't bind.

Anthony
--
Anthony Williams
Author of C++ Concurrency in Action | http://www.manning.com/williams

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