How to get reference to an element of a std::tuple?

danijar picture danijar · Apr 5, 2013 · Viewed 15.3k times · Source

You can get the value of the nth element of an std::tuple using std::get<n>(tuple). But I need to pass one element of that tuple as reference to a function.

How do I get the reference to an element of a std::tuple?

Answer

mfontanini picture mfontanini · Apr 5, 2013

std::get returns a reference(either const or non-const), so this works:

void fun(int &a) {
    a = 15;
}

void test() {
    std::tuple<int, char> foo{ 12, 'a' };
    fun(std::get<0>(foo));
}

Demo here.