Back to proposals-2013
Title: Auto - a necessary evil?
Proposer: roger_orr
Type: Presentation
Duration: 90 minutes
Description: C++11 repurposed an old keyword “auto” to allow you to declare a variable
with a deduced type.
For example “auto i = 10;” declares a variable “i” of type “int”.
There were several motivations for providing a new meaning for this keyword.
However, like many things, once a new feature is provided people will find
creative things to do with it
that may well go beyond the original expectations of the people who first
made the proposal.
In this talk I will look at the times when you *must* use auto (which makes
it 'necessary'.)
I will then look at the interesting cases when you *might* use it - or
perhaps abuse it (which makes it 'evil').
I also expect to cover some places when you may *not* use auto and a few
'gotchas' where you may not get what you expect!
I will try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of using auto so that you
can make informed decisions in your own codebases about when auto should –
and should not – be used.
The talk will be mostly focused on C++ although I may compare and contrast
with similar facilities in other languages, such as 'var' in C#.
Asti: I expect that levels of evilness will be measured in the time honoured fashion or how many kittens are tortured? If so then yes. 