When should you use constexpr capability in C++11?

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Suppose it does something a little more complicated.

constexpr int MeaningOfLife ( int a, int b ) { return a * b; }

const int meaningOfLife = MeaningOfLife( 6, 7 );

Now you have something that can be evaluated down to a constant while maintaining good readability and allowing slightly more complex processing than just setting a constant to a number.

It basically provides a good aid to maintainability as it becomes more obvious what you are doing. Take max( a, b ) for example:

template< typename Type > constexpr Type max( Type a, Type b ) { return a < b ? b : a; }

Its a pretty simple choice there but it does mean that if you call max with constant values it is explicitly calculated at compile time and not at runtime.

Another good example would be a DegreesToRadians function. Everyone finds degrees easier to read than radians. While you may know that 180 degrees is 3.14159265 (Pi) in radians it is much clearer written as follows:

const float oneeighty = DegreesToRadians( 180.0f );

Lots of good info here:

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/constexpr

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