Non const lvalue references
Because making modification on a temporary is meaningless, C++ doesn't want you to bind non-const reference to a temporary. For example:
int a;
double &m = a; // caution:this does not work.
What if it works?a
is of type int and is being converted to double. So a temporary is created.
You can modify m
, which is bound to a temporary, but almost nothing happens. After the modification, variable a
does not change (what's worse? You might think a
has changed, which may cause problems).
That is because a temporary can not bind to a non-const reference.
double &m = a;
a
is of type int
and is being converted to double
. So a temporary is created. Same is the case for user-defined types as well.
Foo &obj = Foo(); // You will see the same error message.
But in Visual Studio, it works fine because of a compiler extension enabled by default. But GCC will complain.