Re: Warning when using trailing return type and decltype

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:11:31 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<jhfqjf$j03$1@dont-email.me>
On 2012-02-15 02:23, Jens Auer wrote:

I am trying to write me a little helper function to reduce a list
using a binary function:
#include<vector>

struct Int
{
   explicit Int(int);
};

Int intfunc(Int, Int);

template<typename FwdIt, typename Func, typename T>
auto foldl(FwdIt first, FwdIt last, Func f, T initial) ->
decltype(f(initial, *first))
{
   for(; first != last; ++first)
   {
      initial = f(initial, *first);
   }

   return initial;
}


Just wondering: Why do you specify the result type as
decltype(f(initial, *first)) here and not T, which the actual value that
you are returning?

// instantiate template to check compilation
void instantiate()
{
   std::vector<Int> v;

    Int x3 = foldl(v.begin(), v.end(), intfunc, Int(0));
    Int x4 = foldl(v.cbegin(), v.cend(), intfunc, Int(0));
}

When I compile this on VC++2010, I get warning:
Warning 1 warning C4172: returning address of local variable or
temporary c:\users\jensa\desktop\vs2010bug\foldl\foldl\foldl.cpp 18
Warning 2 warning C4172: returning address of local variable or
temporary c:\users\jensa\desktop\vs2010bug\foldl\foldl\foldl.cpp 18

g++ 4.6 compiles without these warning, which I think is correct. Can
anybody clarify this for me? We currently have setup our project to
turn warnings like this into errors and I would really like to keep
this setting. The code compiles without warning when I replace the
decltype with the fixed return type Int.


IMO there is nothing wrong in your code, decltype(f(initial, *first))
should be deduced to be equal to Int, which is exactly the same type
that you are returning. Testing with VS2010 it seems that

static_assert(std::is_same<decltype(f(initial, *first)), T>::value,"");

this test fails pointing to the root of the compiler error. It turns
out, that the wrong result

static_assert(std::is_same<decltype(f(initial, *first)), T&>::value,"");

is accepted. This is definitively a compiler error, the function intfunc
returns an Int and this type is required to be returned by decltype.

PS: I have not found such a function in the standard library. If there
is one, I would be happy to know.


Use std::accumulate from <numeric>, it is exactly equal to your foldl
template except for the following differences:

a) The last two function parameters are inverted, and
b) The return type is T, not decltype(f(initial, *first))

HTH & Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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