[basic] Use past subjunctive after "as if"

[lprv]

No description provided.

[tkoeppe]

@W-E-Brown for commentary perhaps?

[tkoeppe]

I don't think the status quo is wrong; it's just a stylistic choice. We could change it, but... we could change a lot of things.

[W-E-Brown]

On Dec 16, 2025, at 5:22 AM, Thomas Köppe ***@***.***> wrote: tkoeppe left a comment (cplusplus/draft#8656) <#8656 (comment)> @W-E-Brown <https://github.com/W-E-Brown> for commentary perhaps?

Well, since you asked ... :) Grammatically, the change to the subjunctive following the conditional "if" seems correct to me. However, I found [class.compare.default]/Note 2 where a similar change could (and likely should) be made. It wouldn't surprise me to find more such places. More generally, the intent of (the multiple occurrences) of the phrase "it is as if" is not clear to me, since I don't know (and can't seem to find) the antecedent of "it" in these contexts. I'm sure this is not what we wanted to hear at this late stage, but (unless I'm overlooking something obvious to others) this strikes me as a substantial defect needing clarification in the current wording.