Does the unary + operator have any practical use?

Question

Was the unary + operator only included for symmetry with the unary - operator, or does it find some practical use in C++ code?

Searching here, I came across What is the purpose of the unary '+' operator in C?, but the only useful scenarios there involve preprocessor macros. Those are good to know, but they seem to be some less common situations, and involve macros. Are there any use cases involving more common C++ code?

Answer 1

char ch = 'a';
std::cout << ch << '\n';
std::cout << +ch << '\n';

The first insertion writes the character a to cout. The second insertion writes the numeric value of ch to cout. But that's a bit obscure; it relies on the compiler applying integral promotions for the + operator.