🚀 go-pugleaf

    Why not allow a third form, where the caller would pass as a third argument
    a reference to the place where the result should be put?

    void operator+(matrix& x, matrix& y, matrix& result) { ... }

    The previous example would translate into:
	    matrix U;
	    operator+(A,B,U);
	    operator+(U,C,X);
    and no copying would be necessary. Am I missing something obvious?

	 Daniel Ranson
	 X400: ranson@lannion.cnet.fr
	 uucp: ranson@cnetlu.fr, or ...!mcvax!inria!cnetlu!ranson

Why not allow a fourth form, using Named Return Values (see
July/August C++ Report for details of this GNU C++ language
extension):

matrix operator+(matrix& x, matrix& y) return z { ... }

This permits the compiler to give the effiency of return-by-reference
with the semantics of return-by-value.

Michael