How do I make this simple addition code less verbose?

Question

I really don't get why it has to take so much to make such a little function. Here's what I have.

template <typename A, typename B> auto add(A a, B b) -> decltype(a + b) {
   return a + b;
}

Is there a way to shrink this code while maintaining its ability to take different arguments? For a comparison, here is it in Python; there is a big difference between the two.

def add(a, b):
    return a + b

Answer 1

You may want to take a look at Pythy.

What you want seems a lot like:

PYTHY(add, x, y) (
    return x + y;
)

Make sure to read this part of the article, as pointed out by Konrad:

It appears that we are derefencing a null pointer. Remember in C++ when dereferencing a null pointer, undefined behavior occurs when there is an rvalue-to-lvalue conversion. However, since a non-capturing lambda closure is almost always implemented as an object with no members, undefined behavior never occurs, since it won't access any of its members. Its highly unlikely that a non-capturing lambda closure could be implemented another way since it must be convertible to a function pointer. But perhaps not?