Two weeks ago, I had a pleasure to give a talk at our local C++ User Group in Cracow. This time I spoke about vocabulary types from C++17: std::optional, std::variant and std::any.

The Talk  

During the presentation, I tried to explain the motivation and some most crucial use cases for the new types that we got in C++17.

For example for std::variant we can experiment with the code for computing roots of an equation:

// aX^2 + bX + c
? ? ? FindRoots(double a, double b, double c)
{
    const auto delta = b * b - 4.0 * a * c;

    if (delta > EPSILON)
    {
        const auto p = sqrt(delta);
        const auto x1 = (-b + p) / (2.0 * a);
        const auto x2 = (-b - p) / (2.0 * a);
        return ? ?
    }
    else if (delta < -EPSILON)
        return ? ? // no roots in real numbers...

    return -b / (2.0 * a);    
}

What type should we return? How to transfer the information that we might have none, one or two roots of the equation?

Some options:

  • use int as the return type and return number of roots, then take two double pointers or references to output the results.
  • return vector<double> with the results
  • return tuple<int, double, double> (integer for the number of results and then two possible values).

Or we can use std::variant:

// aX^2 + bX + c
using TRoots = std::variant<std::monostate, 
                            double, 
                            std::pair<double, double>>;

TRoots FindRoots(double a, double b, double c)
{
    const auto delta = b*b-4.0*a*c;

    if (delta > EPSILON)
    {
        auto p = sqrt(delta);
        double x1 = (-b + p)/(2*a);
        double x2 = (-b - p)/(2*a);
        return std::pair(x1, x2);
    }
    else if (delta < -EPSILON)
        return std::monostate();

    return -b/(2*a);         
}

Now, with std::variant we can express all the possible options without any hacks or output parameters.

What do you think about such design?

The Slides  

Extra Info  

If you want to learn more about those types, you can also read the following blog posts:

Plus each of the types has a separate chapter in my book: