Auto – A Necessary Evil?

To have a right to do a thing
is not at all the same
as to be right in doing it

~ G.K.Chesterton

The keyword auto has a new use in C++11 – although the suggestion has been under discussion for a while, as we shall see. It was one of the early proposals for addition to what was then called C++0x and, since it was both useful and (relatively) non-controversial, some compilers added support for it well before the completion of C++11. This does have the advantage that it has had ‘field testing’ by a large number of programmers and so the form of the feature in the new International Standard seems to be pretty solid.

The keyword auto now lets you declare variables where the compiler provides the actual type and the programmer is either unwilling or unable to name the actual type. The keyword can also be used in function definitions to let you provide the return type after the rest of the function declaration, which is useful when the return type depends on the type of the arguments.

As with any new keyword there are questions about usage – at two levels. First of all, where and how are programmers permitted to use the new feature. Secondly, what guidance is there to sensible adoption of the new feature. I intend to start with by answering the first question and then subsequently focus on the second.

A bit of history

The word auto has been re-purposed in C++11 – it was inherited from C where it has been a keyword since the first days of The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie.

The old meaning of auto was defined as follows:

This meant that the keyword essentially added nothing over an implicit declaration:

  {
    auto int i; // explicitly automatic
    int j;      // implicitly automatic
    // ...
  } 
  // end of life for both i and j

and so in practice auto was almost never used in production code.

When Bjarne Stroustrup started working on C++ his Cfront compiler originally allowed auto to be used for variable declarations in a very similar way to that now in C++11: “ The auto feature has the distinction to be the earliest to be suggested and implemented: I had it working in my Cfront implementation in early 1984, but was forced to take it out because of C compatibility problems ” [ Stroustrup ].

Many years later there was a discussion on the C++ committee email reflector about the difficulty of declaring variables resulting from complex template expressions. David Abrahams wrote (in ext-4278, 26 Oct 2001): “ ...the expression results in a very complicated nested template type which is difficult for a user to write down ”.

At the time the best suggestion was to write such variable declarations as something like:

  typeof(<expression>) x = <expression>;

( typeof was an early name for what eventually became decltype in C++11).

This however meant that the (potentially rather complex) expression had to be written twice , for example in this simple case:

  typeof(alpha*(u-v)*transpose(w)) 
     x = alpha*(u-v)*transpose(w);

which made the code harder to read – and was also a good source of bugs if and when the expression was changed.

He suggested this form of declaration could be replaced with something like:

  template <class T> T x = <expression>;

The C++ template argument deduction rules could then come into play to work out the actual compile-time type of ' x '.

In the subsequent discussion Andy Koenig wrote: “ I would also like to see something like

  auto x = <expression>;

I know we can’t use auto , but you get the idea. ”

However, various people picked up on his, probably throwaway, suggestion and the idea gained momentum. Of course, a big concern was whether this change of use for the auto keyword would break a lot of code; the standards committee is understandably very reluctant to break existing valid code. A number of people spent some time searching internal company code bases they had access to and also using the now defunct Google Code Search. Daveed Vandevoorde reported that “ Google Code Search finds less than 50 uses of auto in C++ code. ”

It turned out that most existing uses of auto were in test code (verifying that compilers, parsers or other tools handling C++ code correctly processed the keyword) and that a number of the remaining uses were in fact incorrect! The research gave the committee confidence that repurposing the keyword would not be a major problem. This confidence seems to have been well-founded.

The first formal paper for C++0x was N1478 (Apr 2003) [ N1478 ]. The emphasis of this paper was in providing ways to make generic programming easier – the draft of this proposal (ext-5364) begins: “ Proposal for “auto” and “typeof” to simplify the writing of templates ”.

The paper also proposed another new keyword, fun , which was used for declaring function return types. Over time this was replaced by an overloaded use for auto (and jokes about how we lost the fun.) I do sometimes wonder whether auto is in danger of gaining multiple meanings in the same way that the keyword static has!

It is worth keeping this history in mind when looking at the use of auto as it might help distinguish the two main uses (one for variables and one for functions). It is also instructive to compare the original target design space – templates – with the range of uses finally allowed. It isn’t the first time that a feature in C++ has had its use broadened well beyond the original expectations.

So what did we end up with?

auto is repurposed and can be used in a variety of ways, such as:

• a placeholder for the type in a simple variable declaration:

      auto x = 5; //'auto' here is equivalent to 'int'
  

• to declare a variable referring to a lambda:

      auto lambda1 = [](int i){ return i * i; }; 

• in a new expression:

      new auto(1.0); //'auto' equivalent to 'double'

• in function declarations (and definitions) allowing the return type to be specified at the end:

      auto f()->int(*)[4]; 

• in function template declarations:

      template <class T, class U>
      auto add(T t, U u) -> decltype(t + u);

  where this is considerably simpler than the equivalent without auto :

      template <class T, class U>
      decltype((*(T*)0) + (*(U*)0)) add(T t, U u);

In each case auto is a place holder for a specific compile time type – this type is ‘baked in’ by the compiler. This is worth highlighting, especially for those used to languages with dynamic types; there is no runtime overhead in using auto . Also note that the use of auto does not change the meaning of the code – it means exactly the same as the equivalent code with the deduced type written in full.

Once formally adopted into the working paper, auto became available for use in several compilers. Scott Meyer’s list [ Meyers12a ] of C++11 support shows auto was available in:

• gcc 4.4 (formal release Apr ’09)
• MSVC 10 (formal release Apr ’10)

and the examples given above all do compile successfully with both gcc and MSVC.

As the wording for auto was being polished for inclusion in C++11 (and as additional papers were written adding further new features to the language) there was a keen interest in avoiding any ‘special cases’ for auto . The committee followed the general principle of trying to make use of auto orthogonal to other choices: so for example auto for function return types is not restricted to function templates but can also be used for non-template functions.

Interactions with other items

r-value references

One of the new items added to C++11 was r-value references (designated with &&). As many of you will already be well aware this was principally added to support ‘move semantics’ which enables significant performance improvements when copying data out of temporary objects.

  auto var1 = <expression>;
  auto & var2 = <expression>;
  auto && var3 = <expression>;

These are all valid (subject to constraints on the actual expression).

Note though the last in particular may not do quite what you expect … I will say more about this in the second article. (Scott Meyers covered this in his article on ‘Universal References in C++’ [ Meyers12b ].)

Lambda

The addition of lambda expressions to C++ was one of the motivating cases for auto . Passing a lambda to a function template works easily – for example:

  template <typename T> void invoke(T t);
  ...
  invoke([](int i){ return i; });

The call to invoke passes a (trivial in this example) lambda that takes an int and returns it. The compiler deals with instantiation of the correct template and so the programmer neither knows nor cares what the actual type of the lambda is.

But what if you want to hold the lambda in a variable?

  <type> square = [](int i){ return i * i; };
  int j = square(7);

The $64,000 question is: “What should replace <type> ?” The answer is auto .

NSDMI (non-static data member initialisers)

In C++11 values can be provided for non-static data members that will be used to provide the initial value (unless one is supplied in the initialisation list of the constructor). For example:

  class x {
    int i = 128;
    double d = 2.71828;
  };

Could you instead write:

  class x {
    auto i = 128;
    auto d = 2.71828;
  };

Short answer: no. This was rejected ... see ‘Where can’t you use it?’ below for a bit more detail about the reasons for this.

Range-based for

C++11 added syntactic sugar to support simple syntax for iteration over containers, for example:

  for (std::string x : container) {
    // do something with 'x'
  }

which is a simpler and safer way to write:

 for (std::vector<std::string>::const_iterator it
    = container.begin(); it != container.end();
    ++it) {
   std::string x = *it;
   // do something with 'x'
 }

The auto keyword is allowed in this context too, so you can write:

  for (auto x : container) {
    ...
  }

and the compiler will deduce the correct type for x to match the elements in the container.

The use of references and const allows more control over whether the loop variable is a value or a reference and whether or not it is constant:

  for (auto & x : container) {
    x += ...
  }

Or

  for (auto const & x : container) {
    ...
  }

(Note that in the first example the type of x is already a const reference if the container is const .)

Specification note

You may or may not care that range-based for is actually specified in terms of auto (see Listing 1).

{
  auto && __range = range-init;
  for ( auto __begin = begin-expr,
             __end = end-expr;
        __begin != __end;
        ++__begin ) {
    for-range-declaration = *__begin;
    statement
  }
}
			

The decltype keyword

The keyword decltype obtains the type of an expression. In C++03 there was no easy way to do this and various tricks were invented to provide various derived types – for example by using nested typedef s or associated traits classes. While auto allows you to declare a variable of the same type as an expression, decltype provides a more general technique. For example, declaring a variable without an initial value:

  std::vector<int> vec;
  decltype(vec.begin()) iter;

There are some subtle differences declaring a variable with decltype and with auto , which I will touch on later.

Where must you use it?

The basic principle behind auto is that the compiler knows the type … but you either can’t describe it or don’t want to. There is one primary use-case where you cannot name the type – with lambdas. Lambdas are most often used as arguments to other functions. However, if you want one as a local variable, the standard states (5.1.2p3) that the type of the lambda-expression “ is a unique, unnamed nonunion class type – called the closure type ” (my emphasis)

What this means is you the programmer cannot name the type (as the type is unnamed), nor can you even use decltype to declare a variable to hold the lamdba (as the type is unique so the type in the decltype won’t match the actual type of the expression).

Side note:

A small number of types in the standard are specified as unspecified so you cannot name them portably. auto gives you a way to create variables of those types; however this is almost never a genuine problem as the number of use cases when you genuinely need to do this is vanishingly small!

What is the actual type of a lambda variable?

Listing 2 is a simple example of a variable holding a lambda.

int main()
{
  auto sum = [] (int x, int y)
  { return x + y; }; 

  int i(1);
  int j(2);
  // ...
  std::cout << i << "+" << j << "=" 
    << sum(i, j) << std::endl;
}
			

In this contrived example the lambda is created and assigned to sum at the start of main and then invoked at the end of main in the output operation. But, if we are curious, we may be wondering what actually is the type of the variable holding the lambda.

We cannot name it in our code, but we are allowed to perform some other operations on the type.

We may for instance try to get some information by using typeinfo , for example with: typeid(sum).name()

The actual output is implementation specified, I obtain this with MSVC:

  class <lambda_8f4bf0680d354484748e55d11883b00a>

and this with gcc:

  Z4mainEUliiE_

(this name demangles to main::{lambda(int, int)#1} )

This gives some hint about possible implementation strategies in each case, but obviously code like this is of very limited practical utility.

An alternative solution

Very commonly of course we are not interested in the precise type of the variable but more in what we can do with it. We could then make use of the C++ function class to hold the variable:

  std::function<int(int, int)> sum = [](int i,
                                              int j) ...

This technique employs type erasure behind the scenes – the actual lambda type is hidden inside the std::function object at the cost of a small runtime penalty. ( auto avoids this penalty.)

This looks very similar to the following C# code:

  Func<int, int, int> sum = (int x, int y) => {...}

Are lambdas the only place to use auto?

Declaring variables to hold lambda expressions is, I believe, the only time auto is mandatory in your code. However most people recommend you use auto in (at least some of) the cases where giving the name of type yourself is a valid option.

Herb Sutter, for example, wrote: “ For example, virtually every five-line modern C++ code example will say “auto” somewhere. ” [ Sutter ]

As the quotation from G.K.Chesterton implies, being allowed to use auto does not mean this is always the right thing to do. I will look in the subsequent article about some of the forces involved in deciding when to use (and when not to use) the auto keyword.

Where can’t you use it?

In C++11 you cannot use auto :

• As the type of lambda arguments :

      auto sum = [] (auto x, auto y) 
      // not (currently) legal
        { /*...*/
   }

  This however was voted into the next release – C++14 – at this April’s WG21 meeting; and is already in some recent versions of gcc.

  What this generates is a lambda which can take different argument types – a sort of ‘lambda template’. This has been named ‘polymorphic lambda’ and you may well have heard some of the discussion about this feature, which is one of the most common requests people make for extensions to lambda.

• To declare function return types without a trailing-return-type declaration

      auto func() { return 42; }
      // not (currently) legal

  This also was voted into C++14 – compilers will be able to deduce the return type of func() from the type of the returned expression (or expressions, if they are of equivalent type).

• To declare member data

      class X {
        auto field = 42; // error
        // ...
      }; 

  As mentioned earlier, this idea was floated during the discussions about auto for C++11, but there were concerns over whether this change might make the parsing of class definitions too complex and also over violations of the ODR (one definition rule) if the type of the initialisation expression was different in two different translation units.

  Discussion on supporting this one has resurfaced recently and it is possible there will be a proposal to add it to the language.

  I note that C#, where the var keyword has much the same purpose as auto for C++, also disallows fields being declared with var . Perhaps this common choice indicates some deeper problems with what at first sight seems to be a relatively straightforward extension.

• To declare function arguments

      void foo(auto i) { /*...*/ } // error
  

  The idea here is that this declares a function foo that behaves like a template and instantiates itself according to the type of argument provided – the code above would be effectively equivalent to:

      template <typename __T1>
      void foo(__T1 i) { /* ... */
   }

  However, we already have function templates to do this job, and the use of explicitly named template arguments rather than auto allows you to express constraints between the arguments types more easily. However, there is some interest in supporting this syntax and so it may possibly be standardised at some time in the future, but is not currently in scope. It may be introduced as part of the ‘concepts lite’ development that is being formalised as a Technical Specification since this may provide the vocabulary to express constraints between the arguments.

Conclusion

C++11 contains a number of new features, some of which are somewhat complicated or obscure. The auto keyword though seems to be relatively safe and easy to use and allows complicated variable declarations to be greatly simplified. When used in conjunction with the range-based for loop the resultant code, to my mind at least, expresses intent much more clearly than the equivalent C++03 code and with very few downsides.

However, the use of auto is not always so cut and dried – and there are also some subtle interactions with const and r-value references. In the next article I will explore in more detail when you might wish to use auto and when you might prefer not to use it (and why). I will also cover some of the cases where auto produces different behaviour from what you might expect.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the presentation with the same title at ACCU 2013.

Many thanks to Christof Meerwald, Irfan Butt, Sam Saariste and the Overload reviewers for their suggestions and corrections, which have helped to improve this article.

References

[Meyers12a] http://www.aristeia.com/C++11/C++11FeatureAvailability.htm

[Meyers12b] ‘Universal References in C++’, Scott Meyers ( Overload 111)

[N1478] http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2003/n1478.pdf

[Stroustrup] http://www.stroustrup.com/C++11FAQ.html#auto

[Sutter] http://herbsutter.com/elements-of-modern-c-style/