This was a general comment about pass by pointer.

However, I wonder :
Can we really not use std::optional for that?
I really don't know what effect an optional reference or an optional passed by reference has...


Am 27. Januar 2022 07:45:55 MEZ schrieb Yongwei Wu <wuyongwei_at_[hidden]>:
>My point is that using a pointer can be an efficient _implementation_ for
>‘passing an optional parameter by reference’. Just that, no more, no less.
>
>On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 14:15, Nico Josuttis <nico_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> yes, there is no real concepts such as pass-by-pointer. I teach that only
>> as workaround for pass-by-reference (especialky used in C).
>>
>> But this leads to two topics also important to teach :
>> - pointers versus references as members
>> - pass by value always decays, PBR does never do that
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 27. Januar 2022 05:43:57 MEZ schrieb Arthur O'Dwyer via SG20 <
>> sg20_at_[hidden]>:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 10:40 PM Yongwei Wu <wuyongwei_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 04:03, Victor Eijkhout via SG20 <
>>>> sg20_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Why do you teach the “pass by pointer”?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My 2 cents here (in addition to Arthur’s good reply). I think there is a
>>>> use in daily programming to describe ‘potentially null’. Some people prefer
>>>> std::optional, but it has a bad performance impact, especially on large
>>>> objects, and it can only be used on an ‘in’ parameter, but not an ‘out’ or
>>>> ‘in-out’ parameter. If there is no ownership involved and the argument can
>>>> be ‘missing’, I would recommend using a pointer (as versus a reference that
>>>> is not allowed to be null).
>>>>
>>>
>>> It's certainly important to teach that pointers *can be null* (and that
>>> C++ has a keyword for this — `nullptr`!), but I don't think that's relevant
>>> to out-parameters or "pass by pointer" per se. When we're passing by
>>> pointer, we're always passing *some thing* by pointer:
>>> f(x, &y); // x is passed by value or const&, we don't care which; y
>>> is passed by pointer, indicating an out-parameter
>>> In my particular motivating example, where we're just trying to invent a
>>> way to pass a std::string efficiently without copying, there's obviously no
>>> reason to ever pass a null pointer there; the pointer we pass points to *the
>>> string*, by definition. Likewise for an out-parameter, the pointer we
>>> pass points to *the place the result is going to go*, by definition.
>>> Sure, hypothetically someone might call
>>> int x;
>>> f(x, nullptr);
>>> passing garbage for the first parameter and null for the second; but
>>> that's obviously foolish and we don't need to go there.
>>> (If a student brings it up, there's lots of philosophically interesting
>>> stuff around invariants that aren't actually invariant, especially now that
>>> we have C++20 Concepts. For example, C++20 defines
>>> `std::totally_ordered<float> == true`, despite the existence of `NaN`; with
>>> basically the same rationale I gave above: "[comparing things against NaN]
>>> is obviously foolish and we don't need to go there." C++ is full of corner
>>> cases where something is *physically* possible but *semantically* a bad
>>> idea. variant::valueless_by_exception() also comes to mind (but I would
>>> rather tell a student about NaN than tell them about
>>> valueless_by_exception! :D)
>>>
>>> –Arthur
>>>
>>>> --
>> Nico Josuttis
>> (sent from my mobile phone)
>>
>
>
>--
>Yongwei Wu
>URL: http://wyw.dcweb.cn/

-- 
Nico Josuttis
(sent from my mobile phone)