Re:T* makes for a poor optional<T&>
by kentonv on Monday December 13, 2021 @09:38PM
(#29547541)
The C++ committee could come up with actual syntax for this so it doesn't need macros.
> There's no enforcement of any kind that anything is checked as a result. There's some hoop-jumping with friend classes to "hide" the readMaybe() function to make the non-macro usage as ugly as possible to strongly encourage using the macro-convention, but that's hardly "enforcement".
Sure fine. Anyone who wants to reach into the internal APIs could also just as easily do `#define private public` and bypass every protection C++ has. We're not trying to defend against malicious developers here.
The actual implementation of Maybe doesn't seem to force anything, it just returns a pointer to the stored value. There's no enforcement of any kind that anything is checked as a result. There's some hoop-jumping with friend classes to "hide" the readMaybe() function to make the non-macro usage as ugly as possible to strongly encourage using the macro-convention, but that's hardly "enforcement".
It's a cute syntax & macro pattern, but it's hardly a good fit for a C++ standard, either.