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[autoCopy()] Unproxying and evaluation helper for `auto`.

Jö Fahlke requested to merge feature/autocopy into master

Intended merge date: 2017-11-13.

This introduces a helper function that enables auto type deduction even in the presence of proxies and pre-C++11 libraries with a tendency to capture references to temporaries.

Note: the motivating examples below make use of specializations of autoCopy() that will be introduced in later commits.

Example 1: deducing the element type of a vector when proxies are a possibility:

template<class Vector>
auto pop_and_clear(Vector &v)
{
  auto head = autoCopy(v[0]);
  v.clear();
  return head;
}

Without autoCopy() this would be undefined behaviour if Vector happens to be std::vector<bool>.

Example 2: a custom number type with lazy evaluation:

template<class MaybeCustomType>
auto f(MaybeCustomType v)
{
  return 2 * v - 1;
}

This fails for the custom number type from the automatic differentiation library Adept, because Adept constructs an expression object that holds references to its subexpressions and is evaluated only when it is assigned to a number object later. Due to the use of auto this expression object is passed out of the function, but the temporary object for the subexpression 2*v is destroyed when the function returns. Wrapping the expression in the return statement with autoCopy() ensures that the evaluation happens while the reference to the subexpression is still valid, and has no ill effect when fundamental types instead of Adept's custom types are used.

Edited by Jö Fahlke

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