C++ Forwarding on variadic values which are not rvalue references

Question

Consider:

template <typename... Args>
void foo(Args... args) {
    bar(std::forward<Args>(args)...);
}

template <typename... Args>
void foo2(Args&&... args) {
    bar(std::forward<Args>(args)...);
}

I understand the perfect rvalue references forwarding in case of foo2, but what is the purpose of forwarding the variadic argument values of foo?

What would be different if foo would look like this?

template <typename... Args>
void foo(Args... args) {
    bar(args...);
}

Answer 1

It's not the same thing.

In this

template <typename... Args>
void foo(Args... args) {
    bar(std::forward<Args>(args)...);
}

• Args will never be deduced to be a reference (foo(Args...) means foo's taking the arguments by value, not by reference);
• on the other hand std::forward<T>(t) is nothing more than static_cast<T&&>(t), just with a more explicit intent from the programmer;

The two things together sum up to static_cast<Args&&>(args)... having an rvalue reference return type, i.e. returning an rvalue (because Args is not a reference, so no reference collapsing can occur between Args and && to give an lvalue reference return type, which would mean an lvalue return value).

So no, there's no perfect forwarding in your first version of foo. The std::forward in it unconditionally casts its arguments to rvalues; and that's typically std::move's job:

// this is equivalent to the code above
template <typename... Args>
void foo(Args... args) {
    bar(std::move(args)...);
}