Has there ever brrn a proposal to make void a legal type for
ordinary variables and structure/class data members?

What I am thinking of is making the handling of void more
like other types (e.g. int).

  .  A variable /data member of type void takes 0 bytes of
     storage
  .  constructs assigning to or using the value of a void
     storage location do not generate stores or loads

This might at first seem like a silly idea, but I have on
several occasions wanted to use it.
The situation where I would find it useful is for writing
and using templates.  A general template definition is
sometimes useful in a reduced role.  For example, Set<T>
could be implemented using Map<T,void>.  There would be no
wasted storage, and the Map specific methods, like

  U& Map<T,U>::valueAt(T&)

could be hidden by some technique like private inheritance.


Has this idea come up before?  If it has I could someone
tell me what happened, and if not, is there any interest in
the idea?  I think that it could be made to work without
breaking existing parts of the language.  The benefits would
be:

  .  Allowing reuse by eliding irrelevant data (like Set<T>)
  .  More uniformity in the language
  .  The type  void&  has merits similar to  void*
--
Stephen Adams                           Email: S.R.Adams@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Electronics and Computer Science        Tel: 0703 593649
University of Southampton               Fax: 0703 593045
Southampton  SO9 5NH,  UK