Around 20 years ago the GCC compiler had what was called "named return values". It got taken away because compiler optimizations could generate equivalent code.

But I just found one case where this can't be true and I wanted to share my workaround with the community for potential discussion. Suppose you have a std::wstring wrapper:

#include <string>

namespace personal

{

struct string : std::wstring

{

    typedef std::string base;

[...]

    wchar_t const * get(std::wstring && r = std::wstring())
    {
        r = std::wstring(base::begin(), base::end());

        return r.c_str();
    }
};

}

personal::string s = "Hello world";

cout << s.get() << endl; // will be just fine

In the aforementioned case, I am creating the return value before the function get() is called; this way the returned c_str() will live during the duration of the temporary variable created thus will not get destroyed within the function.

Anyway I just thought this might be useful to know.

Regards,

--

Phil Bouchard
Founder & CTO
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