Everywhere?!

​There’s a paper that might be a “guide” P0600R0 - [[nodiscard]] in the Library.

The proposal didn’t make into C++17 but was voted into C++20. It suggests a few places were the attribute should be applied.

For existing API’s:

• not using the return value always is a “huge mistake” (e.g., always resulting in resource leak)
• not using the return value is a source of trouble and can happen easily (not obvious that something is wrong)

For new API’s (not been in the C++ standard yet):

• not using the return value is usually an error.

Here are a few examples where the new attribute should be added:

• malloc()/new/allocate - expensive call, usually not using the return value is a resource leak
• std::async() - not using the return value makes the call synchronous, which might be hard to detect.

On the other hand such function as top() are questionable, as “not very useful, but no danger and such code might exist”

It’s probably a good idea not to add [[nodiscard]] in all places of your code but focus on the critical places. Possibly, as mentioned before, error codes and factories are a good place to start.

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Lastly, we’ll discuss alternatives to this attribute.