C++ 2014: auto return deduction and more!

The new C++ standard-in-the-making codenamed C++1y, has some great new features.

The most standout addition in my opinion is the ‘return type deduction’ feature which allows functions to use ‘auto’ return types that will be deduced at runtime. There are a few limits on this functionality however. Recursion can only happen if there is at least one return statement that can be evaluated to a non-auto type. For example:

// this factorial works
auto factorial(int i)
{
    if(i == 0 || i == 1)
    {
        return 1;
    }
    else
    {
        return i * factorial(i-1);
    }
}
// this one will not
auto factorial2(int i)
{
    if(i > 1)
    {
        return i * factorial(i-1);
    }
    else
    {
        return 1;
    }
}

This feature is very neat and somewhat ‘Pythonic.’ In C++11 the lambda feature already allows this auto typing but in C++14 it will be available to all functions.
Another notable addition to C++ in the latest upcoming release is the introduction of binary literals. With this, you can explicitly specify binary numbers with syntax like:

int nine = 0B1001;

There are many, many more language features being added in C++14; too many to note in detail. Check out more at the Wikipedia article for C++1y or at the standards status page for C++.