Const isn't just about not changing stuff (which can also be broken out of
with mutable but not important), it gives you a different set of
functionality, you get to overload member functions on const qualifier,
return different types, which composes nicely with rest of language. How
would you achieve this with a 3rd party tool?

On Wed, Jun 12, 2024, 11:39 Frederick Virchanza Gotham via Std-Proposals <
std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 3:30 PM Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> >
> > Why should a language feature be introduced for a
> > personal preference? Write a clang-tidy check.
>
>
> You can throw that argument at a lot of good language features. A few
> examples:
>
> - Instead of marking a constructor as explicit, use a 3rd party code
> analysis tool to detect the use of an implicit conversion that uses a
> constructor.
> - Instead of deleting the move constructor, use a 3rd party code
> analysis tool to detect the passing of an Rvalue of type
> "decltype(*this)" to a constructor.
> - Instead of marking a virtual function as " = 0 " in the base class,
> use a 3rd party code analysis tool to ensure that an object of the
> base class is never created by itself, and that any derived classes
> override the base class's virtual function.
> - Instead of marking a variable as 'const', write a comment " // never
> changes" after the variable declaration, and use a 3rd party code
> analysis tool to detect the changing of the value of a variable that
> was declared with " // never changes" after it.
> I can go on and on.
>
> In my original post, I listed 5 effects of "explicit class":
> - All miranda functions deleted by default
> - Any constructor is 'explicit' by default
> - Overridden functions must be marked 'virtual override'
> - Must confirm to compiler that you realise you're overriding a
> non-virtual with a virtual
> - Must write "this->" before every member
>
> Maybe I'm going a bit far with it now, but maybe we could opt
> individually into the restrictions:
>
> class MyClass
>
> restrict[no_mirandas,explicit_default,must_mark_override,nonv-mark-override,must_this]
> {
> };
>
> Of the five effects I listed above, the two I'm most interested in are:
> - All miranda functions deleted by default
> - Must write "this->" before every member
>
> Maybe other people are more interested in the other three?
>
> Also another new restriction I would like is demonstrated in the
> following program:
>
> struct monkey {};
>
> int monkey;
>
> int main(void)
> {
> monkey = 5;
> }
>
> It was a really really really bad idea back in the 1970's to allow C
> to give a struct the same name as a variable. I would like to see this
> deprecated in C++26, and made a compiler error in either C++29 to
> C++32.
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