Here's another potential problem with the tuple spec. The latest draft
declares std::ignore like so:
namespace std {
const /*unspecified*/ ignore;
}
The type of std::ignore is implementation-defined but for illustration,
let's say its defined like this:
namespace std {
struct _Ignore
{
template <class _Type>
_Ignore& operator= (const _Type& value) { return *this; }
};
const _Ignore ignore = _Ignore ();
} // namespace std
(The need for the operator will become evident shortly.)
Here's how the tie() function is specified, quoting from the standard:
template<class... Types}
tuple<Types&...> tie(Types&... t);
4 Returns: tuple<Types&>(t...). When an argument in t is ignore,
assigning any value to the corresponding
tuple element has no effect.
5 [ Example: tie functions allow one to create tuples that
unpack tuples into variables. ignore can be used for
elements that are not needed:
int i; std::string s;
tie(i, ignore, s) = make_tuple(42, 3.14, "C++");
// i == 42, s == "C++"
-end example ]
In the example, the return type of the call to the tie() function is
std::tuple<int&, const std::_Ignore&, std::string&>. Note that the
second element type in the tuple is a constant reference. Regardless of
the implementation-defined type of std::ignore, isn't it impossible to
change the value of a constant reference once initialized? This would
mean the example shown above is ill-formed I believe.
Brad.
