I agree with this, having it would be useful, and reduce the number of
times you would have to evaluate something.

On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 7:24 PM Justin Bassett via Std-Proposals <
std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> This reminds me of pattern matching. I'm not sure if the pattern matching
> proposal allows this, though. Rust would allow something like:
>
> if let Some(x) = some_optional {
> ...
> }
>
> We propose a new variant of the if statement that fuses a condition
>> declaration with an indirection in the true branch. We call it an
>> 'indirect if statement'.
>>
>
> I find it a bit odd that this only works for unary `operator*`. I want
> this to be more general, but I don't know if there's a good alternative
> without going for full pattern matching.
>

I think that it does match the name, as unary `operator*` is the
indirection operator. I would think the kinds of types that would benefit
from this (raw and smart pointers, optionals, etc.) would all use the
indirection operator, though I would certainly like to see a use case for a
type that benefits for a different operator. Possibly a function pointer
type.


> An indirect if statement of the form:
>>
>> if (DECL : EXPR) X else Y;
>>
>> is equivalent to:
>>
>> {
>> auto&& __c = EXPR;
>> if (__c) {
>> DECL = *__c;
>> X;
>> } else {
>> Y; // noteworthy: DECL is not in scope here
>> }
>> }
>>
>
> It would sometimes be preferable to forward __c into DECL, but sometimes
> not. E.g. if EXPR returned an optional<vector<...>> and DECL wanted to be a
> value and not a reference. I don't know what the right choice is.
>

> I do know that I'd use this if it was in the language.
>
> --Justin
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