STL container function return values

Question

When looking over the member functions of the STL containers, an odd thought occurred to me. Why don\'t functions like std::vector::push_back(T) not ha

Answer 1

Returning the added element, or the container in container member functions is not possible in a safe way. STL containers mostly provide the "strong guarantee". Returning the manipulated element or the container would make it impossible to provide the strong guarantee (it would only provide the "basic guarantee"). The reason behind this is, that returning something could possibly invoke an copy-constructor, which may throw an exception. But the function already exited, so it fulfilled its main task successfully, but still threw an exception, which is a violation of the strong guarantee. You maybe think: "Well then lets return by reference!", while this sounds like a good solution, its not perfectly safe either. Consider following example:

MyClass bar = myvector.push_back(functionReturningMyClass()); // imagine push_back returns MyClass&

Still, if the copy-assignment operator throws, we dont know if push_back succeded or not, thus indirectly violating the strong-guarantee. Even though this is not a direct violation. Of course using MyClass& bar = //... instead would fix this issue, but it would be quite inconvenient, that a container might get into an indeterminate state, just because someone forgot a &.

A quite similar reasoning is behind the fact that std::stack::pop() does not return the popped value. Instead top() returns the topmost value in a safe way. after calling top, even when a copy-constructor, or a copy-assignment constructor throws, you still know that the stack is unchanged.

EDIT: I believe returning an iterator for the newly added element should be perfectly safe, if the copy-constructor of the iterator-type provides the no-throw guarantee (and every i know of does).