Up until C++17, we had to use 'lock_guard' as follows:
lock_guard<mutex> mylock(mymutex);
But then C++17 came, and we could do:
lock_guard mylock(mymutex);
There's one weakness here though: If we want the constructor's parameters to be forwarding references, then we cannot do the following:
template<typename T>
class lock_guard {
public:
template<typename T>
lock_guard(T &&arg)
{
}
};
But what if we had a new syntax whereby we could write:
^template^
before the constructor, so that it would look something like:
template<typename T>
class lock_guard {
public:
^template^
lock_guard(T &&arg)
{
}
};
So now the constructor has forwarding references, and you can do:
lock_guard mylock(mymutex):
so that 'T' will be 'mutex&'. And if you do:
lock_guard( move(mymutex) )
then T will be 'mutex' in line with the rules for forwarding references.
I thought of the need for this when writing my paper on std::elide:
If you scroll down to 'Possible Implementation', you'll see that I have a function called 'elide' which returns a type called 'elide_t'. I needed to have a separate function in order to retain whether the parameters were Rvalues or Lvalues -- it's not possible to retain this information with just the class. But with the new feature I'm proposing in this email, we could get rid of the function and just have the class by itself.