auto: useful, annoying or bad practice?

[Jesse Phillips]

On Wednesday, 9 May 2018 at 13:22:56 UTC, bauss wrote:
> Using "auto" you can also have multiple return types.
>
> auto foo(T)(T value)
> {
>     static if (is(T == int)) return "int: " ~ to!string(value);
>     else return value;
> }
>
> You cannot give that function a specific return type as it's 
> either T or it's string. It's not a single type.

Its funny, because you example makes this look like a very bad 
feature. But there are legitimate cases which doesn't actually 
chance the api of the returned type.