Let's do front, back, popFront, and popBack!

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Michel Fortin wrote:
> On 2009-01-29 22:02:07 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu 
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> said:
> 
>> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> Will popFront and popBack return the element removed?  Usually that 
>>> is the meaning of pop (but not always).
>>
>> Great question. In STL they can't because C++ couldn't move values 
>> reliably at the time (C++0X still can't IMHO but that's another 
>> discussion). D would be able to because it has good support for 
>> moving. I just don't want inefficiencies; returning e.g. a large 
>> struct will still involve some memcpying even if costly resources are 
>> not duplicated.
>>
>> So I'm ambivalent about this.
> 
> That would seem like another good use for return type overloading:
> 
>     void popFront();
>     ElementType popFront();
> 
> Too bad we can't have that.
> 

I've been thinking for a while to suggest Walter to allow overloading of 
void vs. anything else return type. Making one private or undefined 
would prevent statically that people call functions and ignore error codes.

Andrei