Re: Overloading on rvalue and lvalue references

From:
SG <s.gesemann@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:11:15 CST
Message-ID:
<f6bde841-4d31-4a56-972e-9d26263b4f0c@e12g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>
On 11 Sep., 20:59, Paul Bibbings wrote:

I am just starting to come to grips with rvalue references and how
they may be applied in several of the expected 'conventional' uses.
However, in some cases I find I have doubts based on an uncertainty
as to how well my compiler (gcc-4.3.2, Cygwin) actually implements
the current C++0x proposals for rvalue refs


It doesn't, actually. The following code still compiles with GCC 4.3
and GCC 4.4 in C++0x-mode but is NOT allowed anymore for safety
reasons

    int main() {
       int i = 42;
       int&& r = i; // rv-ref to lvalue, ill-formed in C++0x
    }

See N2812 for an introduction and N2844 for a detailed wording.

<code>

    #include <iostream>

    void foo(int&) { std::cout << "foo(int&)\n"; }

    void foo(int&&) { std::cout << "foo(int&&)\n"; }

    template<typename T>
    void bar(T&) { std::cout << "bar(T&)\n"; }

    template<typename T>
    void bar(T&&) { std::cout << "bar(T&&)\n"; }

    int main()
    {
       int i = 0;

       foo(0); // #1
       foo(i); // #2
       bar(0); // #3
       //bar(i); // #4 Error: ambiguous

       return 0;
    }

</code>


Yes. This is expected, regardless of the slight change of rules. But
you typically use lvalue-references-to-const for an "optimized pass-by-
value-style interface" (pass-by-value in the sense that the argument
is logically not modified, see vector<>::push_back for example).

[...]
If my understanding is correct, the call bar(0) (#3, rvalue) is
straightforward enough since the rvalue cannot bind to an lvalue
reference, and so
    void bar<int>(int&&)
is instantiated, and used.

For the attempted call bar(i) (#4, lvalue), however, it seems
there will exist the two instantiations:
    - void bar<int>(int& &); and
    - void bar<int&>(int& &&)
where these become, after applying the reference collapsing rules:
    - void bar<int>(int&); and
    - void bar<int&>(int&)
and so disambiguation is not possible, hence the error (gcc-4.3.2).


Correct. If you write T&& and T will be deduced it's a "catch
everything" that is necessary for perfect forwarding. Nevertheless,
you can "apply SFINAE" to disable lvalues if you like:

    #include <type_traits>

    #define REQUIRES(...) ,class=typename \
      std::enable_if<( __VA_ARGS__ )>::type

      [...]

    template<typename T
      REQUIRES( ! std::is_reference<T>::value )
    >
    void bar(T&&) { std::cout << "bar(T&&)\n"; }

(I can't take credit for the nice REQUIRES macro but I don't know who
came up with the idea.)

Cheers,
SG

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