Re: rvalue swap confusion

From:
SG <s.gesemann@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:16:39 CST
Message-ID:
<085f8308-b079-4a36-ad4d-249de2012db1@q16g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>
On 17 Apr., 07:04, SG <s.gesem...@gmail.com> wrote:

I honestly don't understand the motivation for LWG issue #770. You
can still swap an rvalue with an lvalue by invoking the swap member
function on the rvalue. It even works in C++98:

   vector<int> source();

   vector<int> a;
   source().swap(a);


....come to think of it, providing a free swap function that takes only
lvalues as arguments can be all you need to do. From what I
understand it's possible to add "rvalue swap support" for *free* for
all user-defined types.

Suppose, std::swap is overloaded. One version accepts lvalue
arguments only and the 2nd version accepts rvalues as well. In that
case a swap involving an rvalue resolves to the a std::swap function
which accepts an rvalue and forwards its parameters to a swap function
that taking two lvalue arguments (which might be a user-provided swap
function).

The std::swap funciton template overloads might look like this:

  template<typename T>
    requires MoveConstructible<T>
          && MoveAssignable<T>
  void swap(T & x, T & y) // <-- default swap for two lvalues
  {
     T temp ( move(x) );
     x = move(y);
     y = move(temp);
  }

  template<typename X, typename Y>
    requires HasSwap<X&,Y&> // forward to "lvalue-swap"
          && !SameType<X&&,Y&&> // avoid ambiguities & recursion
  inline void swap(X && x, Y && y) // accept lvalues and rvalues
  {
     swap(x,y); // call some swap function that takes two lvalues
  }

This would automatically render every type T that models Swappable<T>
(Swappable<T> refines HasSwap<T&,T&>) also swappable with rvalues for
*free* (HasSwap<T,T&&> and HasSwap<T&&,T>) without specific user-
supplied overloads.

Note: the requirement !SameType<X&&,Y&&> above avoids ambiguities
(can't be both lvalue references of the same type) and also doesn't
allow swapping *two* rvalues of the same type. The latter restriction
is of no advantage since swapping two rvalues is useless.

Cheers!
SG

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