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I created a library "cpp-match" that tries to bring the "?" operator into C++, however it uses a gnu-specific feature (https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Statement-Exprs.html), I did support msvc falling-back to using exceptions for the short-circuit mechanism.

However it seems like C++ wants to only provide this kind of pattern via monadic operations.

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You can't really do Try (which is that operator's name in Rust) because C++ lacks a ControlFlow type which is how Try reflects the type's decision about whether to exit early.

You can imitate the beginner experience of the ? operator as magically handling trivial error cases by "just knowing" what should happen, but it's not the same thing as the current Try feature.

Barry Revzin has a proposal for some future C++ (lets say C++ 29) to introduce statement expressions, the syntax is very ugly even by C++ standards but it would semantically solve the problem you had.

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