Move-assignment and reference member

Question

Copy-assignment for a class with a reference member variable is a no-no because you can\'t reassign the reference. But what about move-assignment? I tried simply mov

Answer 1

(Posted as an answer from comment as suggested by the OP)

In general if one wants to do non-trivial stuff with references in C++, one would be using reference_wrapper<T>, which is essentially a fancy value-semantic stand-in for a T&, then one would be done with it - it already provides (re)assignment and other operations. I'm sure that would make move constructor and assignment near-trivial, if not trivial (note not trivial as in per the is_trivially_* semantics).

"Reference wrapper" is added to C++03 as part of TR1, and is part of C++11.

Documentation: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/functional/reference_wrapper

Answer 2

A reference is, in some sense, a T *const with syntactic sugar on top to auto-derefence, auto-capture, and auto-lifetime extend temporaries. (note that this is not quite true, but often is in practice and practicality)

If you want a reseatable reference, C++ has those: they are called pointers. You can use an accessor to replace dereferencing with a function call if you like. The remaining feature (temporary lifetime extension) that is hard to emulate does not apply to struct members.