I don't disagree about aliasing, but a print function shouldn't be taking ref to a non-const anything anyways, it should have no need to mutate the vector. You

I don't disagree about aliasing, but a print function shouldn't be taking ref to a non-const anything anyways, it should have no need to mutate the vector. You can't clear through a ref to const. Your general point holds but I would say I have probably written/found very few aliasing bugs in C++ over the years, it just doesn't seem to arise often, perhaps your experience differs. Alas there are few ways to prevent dedicated folks from writing really ill-advised code.