Hi Christian, > Yes, I guessed so as well. But what's the reason for this decision? The rationale is in the Design & Evolution of C++. Synopsis: it would be far too easy to accidentally use a temporary as an lvalue, especially since C++ is "helpful" by doing implicit conversions (which may create temporaries otherwise unbeknownst to the programmer). > Yes, mostly. And that this is forbidden imposes a problem in the rare cases > where it does make sense. And in those cases where someone does not want to > use const at all (like me). One workaround to the language safety feature is to do what auto_ptr does. A better workaround is to design the application so that it wouldn't need to use non-const references to temporaries. HTH, --Eljay
