Declare a reference and initialize later?

Question

I have a reference to MyOjbect, but the the exact object depends on a condition. So I want to do something like this:

MyObject& ref; 
if([co         


        

Answer 1

What I like to do is a lambda that's immediately executed.

Let's suppose we want a const std::string& to a variable from under the map - if map does not contain given key - we want to throw.

int main()
{
  std::map myMap = {{"key", "value"}};

  const std::string& strRef = [&]()->const std::string& {
    try {
      return myMap.at("key"); // map::at might throw out_of_range
    }
    catch (...) {
      // handle it somehow and/or rethrow.
    }
  }(); // <- here we immediately call just created lambda.
}

---

You could also use std::invoke() to make it more readable (since C++17)

int main()
{
  std::map myMap = {{"key", "value"}};

  const std::string& strRef = std::invoke([&]()->const std::string& {
    try {
      return myMap.at("key"); // map::at might throw out_of_range
    }
    catch (...) {
      // handle it somehow and/or rethrow.
    }
  });
}