Peter Dimov wrote:

Paul wrote:

...

I understand why boost::bind() must return a const-reference or a value, but what I don't understand is, why must I do boost::bind<R&>(...) if I want it to return by reference?

Why must I (the user) deduce the return type myself?

Can you expand your ... a bit in order to help me understand your question better?

I'll try and explain without getting too long-winded... struct AClass { typedef int var_type; int var; }; I want a function that returns a reference to the int, so i can assign stuff to it... bind<int&>(&AClass::var,_1) = whatever; I have a function that returns a reference to a member: int & get_ref( AClass & a ) { return a.ivar; } now i want to bind to it: bind<int&>(get_ref,_1) = whatever; I have a functor that returns a reference to some member template <class TheClass> struct GetRef { typename TheClass::var_type & operator()( TheClass & c ) const { return c.ivar; } }; now to bind it to AClass's ivar... bind<int&>( GetRef<AClass>(), _1 ) = whatever; but if i had a 'BClass' that had a double instead... struct BClass { typedef double var_type; double var; }; bind<double&>( GetRef<BClass>(), _1 ) = whatever; and if i wanted to do it generically, now i need to do a lot more work... template <class TheClass> void doit( TheClass & c ) { bind< typename TheClass::var_type & >(&TheClass::var, _1) = whatever; } and so on. this can get a lot more complicated. my question is, bind() already knows what the type is. The problem is that it always returns a const& or by value. Can't we have a way of forcing it to return a mutable reference when necessary? I'd like to be able to just do: template <class TheClass> void doit( TheClass & c ) { bind_ref(&TheClass::var, _1) = whatever; } and not have to worry about figuring out the return type myself. cheers Paul