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c++c++11lvaluervalue

How to determine programmatically if an expression is rvalue or lvalue in C++?

What's the best way to determine if an expression is a rvalue or lvalue in C++? Probably, this is not useful in practice but since I am learning rvalues and lvalues I thought it would be nice to have a function is_lvalue which returns true if the expression passed in input is a lvalue and false otherwise.

Example:

std::string a("Hello");
is_lvalue(std::string()); // false
is_lvalue(a); // true
Solution

  • Most of the work is already done for you by the stdlib, you just need a function wrapper:

    template <typename T>
constexpr bool is_lvalue(T&&) {
  return std::is_lvalue_reference<T>{};
}

    in the case you pass a std::string lvalue then T will deduce to std::string& or const std::string&, for rvalues it will deduce to std::string

    Note that Yakk's answer will return a different type, which allows for more flexibility and you should read that answer and probably use it instead.