Re: [boost] Report from Mont Tremblant C++ Committee meeting

From: Alisdair Meredith (alisdair.meredith_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-10-18 08:23:03

Sam Partington wrote:

> That this discussion is going on so long and is so disputed it seems
> to me that there is no right-way, and the best way of fixing it is to
> disallow T& altogether.

That is the direction I am most warming to.

T & is does not meet the Copy Constructible requirements of the
standard (20.1.3) although const T & comes close.

Rather than support it as a special case via rebinding, I am very happy
for that special case to be spelled optional< ref< T > > so there is no
real loss of functionality, although you need a little more trickery
for function templates returning and optional< T >  (specialising for
the T& case)

If simply making the specialization illegal allows us to drop the issue
and move forward, that alone makes it worthwhile for me!  Optional
looks like a great library for TR2, I would hate to see it lose its way
in contentious issues.  And I doubt the pointer-like interface debate
can be so easily swept aside ;?)

AlisdairM