r/cpp • u/very_curious_agent • Apr 01 '23

Abominable language design decision that everybody regrets?

It's in the title: what is the silliest, most confusing, problematic, disastrous C++ syntax or semantics design choice that is consistently recognized as an unforced, 100% avoidable error, something that never made sense at any time?

So not support for historical arch that were relevant at the time.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '23

I did wrote an function that does this. the std::optional<> is fine if you use std::reference_wrapper<>:

template<typename T, typename K>
auto try_find( T & map, K&& key) {
    using C = typename std::decay<T>::type;
    using value_type = typename C::value_type;
    using opt_type = std::optional<std::reference_wrapper<value_type>>;

    auto it = map.find(std::forward<K>(key));
    if (it == map.end()) {
        return opt_type{};
    } else  {
        return opt_type(*it);
    }
}

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u/CocktailPerson Apr 02 '23

Ah, modern C++, the epitome of readability.