this is not a specific bug but a general C++ design question. Consider the following scenario:

struct MyInterface {};

struct Data : MyInterface{};

struct DataWrapper
{
    SomeContainerOf<MyInterface*> getData()
    {...}
private:
    std::vector<Data> dataStorage;
};

In terms of my requirements, I need the accessor function for DataWrapper to return a container of MyInterface* values (pointers because we are really returning Data values).

Ideally, we want to do this without making a copy. I want to know the best way to do this. From what I can tell, something like follows is the idiomatic C++ way to do this:

auto DataWrapper::getData()
{
    return dataStorage | std::ranges::views::transform([](Data& d) -> MyInterface*
    {
       return &d;
    });
}

But the problem is that it is really clear that this accessor method is explicit about its return values – I need it to be known that this method returns this list, and I’m worried that in making the return type auto, it obstructs this a bit. It seems like (I could be wrong here) you aren’t supposed to know what the type of a view is (in a similar style to lambdas)

The alternative to this that I’m considering would be to make a custom view (where I could make the type a little more clear), but it really pains me to reimplement something that is so clearly in the standard. What would be the recommended move for such a scenario? Does modern C++ say that I should keep the return value auto?