Key Points

• There are lvalues and rvalues:
  • In x = y + z, x is an lvalue and y + z is an rvalue.
  • lvalues have an obvious memory location and significant lifetime; they often have a name.
  • rvalues are temporary values that exist for the duration of one line of code; they often don't have names.
• Every function call that returns a value is actually initializing a new object in memory
• The compiler allocates temporary objects (rvalues) as needed (e.g., to hold intermediate results in nested expressions).
• Functions can return references.
• We can overload functions (i.e., define multiple functions with the same name that operate on different sets of arguments).
  • C++ uses the types of the arguments of the function to figure out which function we mean to call. If selecting the best function for a particular set of arguments is ambiguous, it's an compile-time error.
  • We can implement our own versions of C++'s existing operators for our own types, so we can make our types feel “built in”.

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