Barry Revzin has written a paper to try to give C++ expressions like this. It's ugly, even by the standards of C++ but it would work. The rationale is that C++ 29 or C++ 32 wil probably get pattern matching and pattern matching doesn't have great ergonomics if everything is a statement rather than an expression. There are plenty of other things C++ will need to fix once it gets pattern matching, but the direction makes sense if you insist on trying to teach this particular old dog new tricks.
Also, I think Rust would consider itself to be a mainstream language, though they aren't techically "making this switch" because the language has always been expresion oriented from the outset. The Book has about two paragraphs about the statements in the language and then a whole chapter on expressions because almost everything is an expression.
Also, I think Rust would consider itself to be a mainstream language, though they aren't techically "making this switch" because the language has always been expresion oriented from the outset. The Book has about two paragraphs about the statements in the language and then a whole chapter on expressions because almost everything is an expression.