18
I want to write a template function that does something with a std::stack<T> and an instance of T, e.g.:
template<class StackType> inline
bool some_func( StackType const &s, typename StackType::value_type const &v ) {
// ...
}
The reason I pass v by reference is of course to optimize for the case where StackType::value_type is a struct or class and not copy an entire object by value.
However, if StackType::value_type is a "simple" type like int, then it's of course better simply to pass it by value.
The question is: for a type such as int that would become int const& as a formal argument in the above function, will the compiler optimize away the reference and simply pass it by value?