if constexpr - why is discarded statement fully checked?

Question

I was messing around with c++20 consteval in GCC 10 and wrote this code

#include <optional>
#include <tuple>
#include <iostream>

template <std::size_t N, typename Predicate, typename Tuple>
consteval std::optional<std::size_t> find_if_impl(Predicate&& pred,
                                                  Tuple&& t) noexcept {
  constexpr std::size_t I = std::tuple_size_v<std::decay_t<decltype(t)>> - N;

  if constexpr (N == 0u) {
    return std::nullopt;
  } else {
    return pred(std::get<I>(t))
               ? std::make_optional(I)
               : find_if_impl<N - 1u>(std::forward<decltype(pred)>(pred),
                                      std::forward<decltype(t)>(t));
  }
}

template <typename Predicate, typename Tuple>
consteval std::optional<std::size_t> find_if(Predicate&& pred,
                                             Tuple&& t) noexcept {
  return find_if_impl<std::tuple_size_v<std::decay_t<decltype(t)>>>(
      std::forward<decltype(pred)>(pred), std::forward<decltype(t)>(t));
}

constexpr auto is_integral = [](auto&& x) noexcept {
    return std::is_integral_v<std::decay_t<decltype(x)>>;
};


int main() {
    auto t0 = std::make_tuple(9, 1.f, 2.f);
    constexpr auto i = find_if(is_integral, t0);
    if constexpr(i.has_value()) {
        std::cout << std::get<i.value()>(t0) << std::endl;
    }
}

Which is supposed to work like the STL find algorithm but on tuples and instead of returning an iterator, it returns an optional index based on a compile time predicate. Now this code compiles just fine and it prints out

9

But if the tuple does not contain an element that's an integral type, the program doesn't compile, because the i.value() is still called on an empty optional. Now why is that?

Answer 1

This is just how constexpr if works. If we check [stmt.if]/2

If the if statement is of the form if constexpr, the value of the condition shall be a contextually converted constant expression of type bool; this form is called a constexpr if statement. If the value of the converted condition is false, the first substatement is a discarded statement, otherwise the second substatement, if present, is a discarded statement. During the instantiation of an enclosing templated entity ([temp.pre]), if the condition is not value-dependent after its instantiation, the discarded substatement (if any) is not instantiated.[...]

^{emphasis mine}

So we can see that we only do not evaluate the discarded expression if we are in a template and if the condition is value-dependent. main is not a function template so the body of the if statement is still checked by the compiler for correctness.

Cppreference also says this in their section about constexpr if with:

If a constexpr if statement appears inside a templated entity, and if condition is not value-dependent after instantiation, the discarded statement is not instantiated when the enclosing template is instantiated .

template<typename T, typename ... Rest>
void g(T&& p, Rest&& ...rs) {
    // ... handle p
    if constexpr (sizeof...(rs) > 0)
        g(rs...); // never instantiated with an empty argument list.
}

Outside a template, a discarded statement is fully checked. if constexpr is not a substitute for the #if preprocessing directive:

void f() {
    if constexpr(false) {
        int i = 0;
        int *p = i; // Error even though in discarded statement
    }
}