> On Apr 12, 2026, at 11:59 AM, Muneem <itfllow123_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> >Extending std::tuple with operator[] also needs one discussion: Do we only allow this if all the types inside the tuple are distinct? I don’t see it necessary for proposing this extension. However, I’d want for the implementation of operator[] to make the types of the std::variant returned to be distinct even if the types of std::tuple are not.
> ***ANSWER***: It does require a discussion, but what do you mean by "distinct"? like in what way? is the variant gonna handle them differently?
I’m a little tired, so you get just a short reply: Currently, you can write std::tuple<int,int,int>. These types are all the same. With std::tuple<int,float,string> they are all different, i.e. distinct from each other. So, for std::tuple<int,int,int> the easy implementation is for operator[] to return std::variant<int&,int&,int&>. This is allowed, but we can’t use std::get<int&>() anymore, but only std::get<1>() (or any other valid index). If we follow this route, it is also not possible to automatically construct a std::optional<int&> from a std: variant<int&,int&,int&>. The solution (and you already posted that it is possible) is to reduce it to just std::variant<int&> in this case. I don’t see a general problem with allowing std::tuple<int,float,int>, but it needs to be discussed if operator[] is implemented in this case.