P1301R0
nodiscard should have a reason

1. Revision History

1.1. Revision 0

Initial release.

2. Motivation

The [[nodiscard]] attribute has helped prevent a serious class of software bugs, but sometimes it is hard to communicate exactly why a function is marked as [[nodiscard]].

This paper adds an addendum to allow a person to add a string attribute token to let someone provide a small reasoning or reminder for why a function has been marked [[nodiscard("Please do not leak this memory!")]].

3. Design Considerations

This paper is an enhancement of a preexisting feature to help programmers provide clarity with their code. Anything that makes the implementation warn or error should also provide some reasoning or perhaps point users to a knowledge base or similar to have any questions they have about the reason for the nodiscard attribute answered.

The design is very simple and follows the lead of the deprecated attribute. We propose allowing a string literal to be passed as an attribute argument clause, allowing for [[nodiscard("You must use the returned token with api::foobar")]]. The key here is that there are some nodiscard attributes that have different kinds of "severity" versus others. That is, the cost of discarding vector::empty's return value is probably of slightly less concern than unique_ptr::release: one might manifest as a possible bug, the other is a downright memory leak.

Adding a reason to nodiscard allows implementers of the standard library, library developers, and application writers to benefit from a more clear and concise error beyond "Please do not discard this return value". This makes it easier for developers to understand the intent of the code they are using.

4. Wording

All wording is relative to [n4762].

4.1. Intent

The intent of the wording is to let a programmer specify a string literal that the compiler can use in their warning / error display for, e.g. [[nodiscard("Please check the status variable")]].

4.2. Feature Test Macro

nodiscard already has an attribute value in Table 15. If this proposal is accepted, then per the standard’s reasoning the value of nodiscard should be increased to some greater value (such as 201811L).

4.3. Proposed Wording

Modify §14.1 [cpp.cond]'s Table 15:

Attribute	Value
nodiscard	201603L 201811L

Append the following to §9.11.9 Nodiscard attribute [dcl.attr.nodiscard]'s clause 1:

¹ The attribute-token nodiscard may be applied to the declarator-id in a function declaration or to the declaration of a class or enumeration. It shall appear at most once in each attribute-list and no attribute argument-clause shall be present. An attribute-argument-clause may be present and, if present, it shall have the form:

( string-literal )

[Note: The string-literal in the attribute-argument-clause could be used to explain the rationale for why the entity must not be discarded. — end note]