Tip of the Week #11: Return Policy
▻https://abseil.io/tips/11
Originally posted as TotW #11 on August 16, 2012
by Paul Chisholm
Frodo: There’ll be none left for the return journey. Sam: I don’t think there will be a return journey, Mr. Frodo. – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, & Peter Jackson)
Note: this tip, though still relevant, preceded the introduction of move semantics in C++11. Please read this tip with the advice from TotW #77 also in mind.
Many older C++ codebases show patterns that are somewhat fearful of copying objects. Happily, we can “copy” without copying, thanks to something called “return value optimization” (RVO).
RVO is a long-standing feature of almost all C++ compilers. Consider the following C++98 code, which has a copy constructor and an (...)
