Re: stl::map: return default value without inserting a new element?

From:
"Leigh Johnston" <leigh@i42.co.uk>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 7 Apr 2010 01:18:45 +0100
Message-ID:
<XoGdnTUhALvuUibWnZ2dnUVZ8m6dnZ2d@giganews.com>
"Keith H Duggar" <duggar@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:4be295e6-b63f-4876-a796-f824d3495275@22g2000vbg.googlegroups.com...

However it also makes thread-safety more difficult for
clients of getOrZero and therefore IMO is not appropriate
for such a library function. Instead I use an overload of
getOrZero which follows the Tao of POSIX reentrant support:

template < class K, class V, class C, class A >
V const &
getOrZero (
  std::map<K,V,C,A> const & m
, K const & k
, V const & zero
) {
  typename std::map<K,V,C,A>::const_iterator i = m.find(k) ;
  return i != m.end() ? i->second : zero ;
}


Unless I am missing something obvious I am fairly sure that most
implementations of map are not thread-safe so calling find() in your version
above is also not thread-safe (one thread could modify the map whilst the
other thread is searching it) so a lock must still be acquired making adding
a zero parameter instead of using a shared static seem pointless (assuming I
am not missing something obvious).

/Leigh

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