Re: non-const reference to temporary
WalterHoward@gmail.com () wrote (abridged):
g++ will tell me this is an error because I'm passing a non const
reference to a temporary (anonymous variable with no name).
First of all this isn't an error, except by someones overly broad
definition of error. Other people say "why would you pass a
non-const reference to something which will be modified, but
you don't care about the modification?".
Exactly. I don't care about the modification. I just want the
function to do the job I request.
I agree it shouldn't be an error. The reason it is treated as one is that
the construct is, in general, error-prone, because of implicit
conversions. Code like:
void inc( long &x ) { ++x; }
void test() {
int y = 0;
inc( y );
std::cout << y;
}
if it compiled, would output 0 not 1, because the int is converted to a
temporary long and the increment lost.
The problem here is the implicit conversion, not the reference to
temporary. Unfortunately, rather than try to ban non-const references to
temporaries that resulted from implicit conversions, the standard bans
non-const references to all temporaries, which is over-kill.
The proposed solution, apparently, is a new kind of reference, spelt "&&",
that can bind to temporaries. I think if your function has the signature:
void WriteEverythingToFile( File&& file, const std::string& text);
it will work in C++0x. But I'm not an expert on the new stuff, and it
doesn't help you now, nor will it unless you can rewrite the function you
need to call. The situation is less than ideal. You can see, though, that
there are real problems lurking here which are non-trivial to solve, and
the quote you attribute to "other people" doesn't do the problems
justice.
-- Dave Harris, Nottingham, UK.
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