🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 5og@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU, fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) writes:
>Michael Cook <mcook@cognex.com> writes:
>
>>Surely we wouldn't want the standard to allow `void&'.
>
>No, after all, that might let a tiny little bit of orthogonality
>creep into C++, and then who knows what people might want next!
>
>;-)

I realize Fergus is kidding, but we should also note that the language
definition says there are no objects of type void, you can't have
a function parameter of type void, you can't return an expression
from a function declared to return void, and you can't dereference
a void*. In the face of all that, allowing void& would seem kind of
inconsistent.

I think just asserting that void& is a valid type wouldn't be enough.
We'd have to address the prohibitions above, and also say how to (or if
you do) initialize a void& variable, how to (or if you do) pass an argument
to a void& parameter, and how to return a void& from a function. Then we'd
have to assess whether the benefits would be worth the extra complication.

---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage@eng.sun.com


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