There's nothing complicated about using it. I'm not talking about using the pipe operator, I'm talking about implementing it. The C++ version is ridiculously c

There's nothing complicated about using it. I'm not talking about using the pipe operator, I'm talking about implementing it. The C++ version is ridiculously complicated. Let's compare your code with an analogous implementation in Common Lisp. (defun pipe (val &rest fns) (reduce (lambda (acc f) (funcall f acc)) fns :initial-value val)) Just this allows for some pretty similar code: (pipe 99 #'1+ #'sqrt #'1-) which evaluates to 9.0 It is possible to implement it in C++, but the implementation winds up being ridiculously complicated. I just implemented something very similar in Common Lisp and it wound up being incredibly simple. Why doesn't C++ allow for a definition nearly as nice as the Common Lisp one?