David,

You are missing the ref-qualification.

I always argue that member functions returning the guts of an object or
a reference to *this should be lvalue-ref qualified to make sure they
are not called on temporaries, because that would lead to immediate
dangling. So your examples (in my book) should be

   iterator begin() &;
   iterator begin() const &;
>
   T & operator[](size_t i) &;
   T const & operator[](size_t i) const &;

Just my 0.02CHF

Peter.

David Ledger via Std-Proposals wrote on 18.07.20 07:29:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> Duplicate function bodies seem to exist everywhere in C++ codebases.
> This attempts to reduce duplicate code by allowing deduction of const for a function. Allowing a const and non-const function to have the same function body but call the appropriate const or non-const functions.
>
> What I'm talking about it that everyone writes:
>
> iterator begin();
> iterator begin() const;
>
> T & operator[](size_t i);
> T const & operator[](size_t i) const;
>
> Same for operator[] and function at, and begin, end, front, back etc...
>
> For the const and non-const versions of the function, often the body of these functions is identical, all that changes is the return type and the selected overloads in the function body. I don't really see the benefit for this and want to improve this.
>
> So I want to propose the following:
>
> const(auto),
> const(boolean expr)
>
> noexcept(auto), we already have noexcept(boolean expr)
>
> This would let me write:
>
> iterator begin() const(auto);
>
> The problem this introduces is how is the return type determined here, well to do that we would need the bool available for the user:
>
> abbreviated syntax:
> auto begin() const(is_const) -> iterator<is_const>;
>
> or,
>
> template syntax:
> template <bool is_const>
> auto begin() const(is_const) -> iterator<is_const>;
>
> or,
>
> template syntax with return using conditional_t
> auto begin() const(is_const) -> conditional_t<is_const, citerator, iterator>;
>
> There are additional benefits here:
> - Keep function logic in one place, not many.
> - Use template parameters of a class to fully const or not-const all functions in a class.
> - Reduce the maintenance cost of std library code by halving (in some cases) the number of overloads.
>
> As I see it, what needs to be solved:
> - Member function pointers, how to get an exact one?
>
> I'm happy to write up a proposal for this to submit.
> Anyone have and feedback before I write it up?
>
> Regards,
> David Ledger
>

-- 
Peter Sommerlad
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