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guenthert • yesterday at 3:27 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

Hard disagree. There are times when nobody, really nobody, cares about a given type. See the example of std::chrono::steady_clock::now over at cppreference.com. There you have

        const auto start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
        do_some_work(size);
        const auto end = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
        const std::chrono::duration<double> diff = end - start;

        std::cout << "diff = " << diff << "; size = " << size << '\n';
Looking up the (current standard's) return type of std::chrono::steady_clock::now() and spelling it out would serve no purpose here.

Replies

cjfd • yesterday at 3:36 PM

With 'auto' it is so very verbose. It can be shorter. Let us put "using TP = std::chrono::steady_clock::time_point;" in some header file to be used in many places. Now you can write

  TP start = TP::clock::now();
  do_some_work(size);
  TP end = TP::clock::now();
➕ show 3 replies
am17an • yesterday at 4:24 PM

I agree, this would be in the same vein as "STL returns a verbose type, it's okay to use auto here because no-one cares"