The liabilities of binding rvalues to ref

[Peter Alexander]

On Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 20:59:14 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> I should restate: The idea that restricting rvalues from 
> binding to refs *except* the case where it binds to 'this' is a 
> hack.  The binding to 'this' pre-dates the restriction.

Ah ok. I do agree that the asymmetry is quite hacky, although 
binding to 'this' isn't quite the same as binding to ref.


>> I'm not sure about how common it is, but I really don't like 
>> the idea of calls like swap(1, 2) being legal. Seems like a 
>> step backward from C++.
>
> Why is it so bad that that is legal?  Really hard to stop 
> people from writing incorrect code.

You could apply the same argument against static typing, e.g. 
"swap(apple, orange) looks wrong, so why is it so bad not to 
catch the type error at compile time?"

I think we can agree that while it's not possible to stop people 
from writing incorrect code 100% of the time, there is still 
benefit to catching as many cases as practical.