Re: Is there a proposal to fix the operator[] (rvalue/lvalue issues)??

From:
"kanze" <kanze@gabi-soft.fr>
Newsgroups:
comp.std.c++
Date:
Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:06:07 CST
Message-ID:
<1155910912.532657.322550@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
jose.diego@gmail.com wrote:

peter koch wrote:

Perhaps Jose thought that operator[] could simply return a
value_type::first_type in those situations where the result
is used as a rvalue. This can not be done since there is no
overload on returnvalue.


a value_type::second_type default object :-)

of course it can't be done. there is the reason I am asking if
there is a proposal for fixing that

Another interpretation is how operator[] works on constant maps:

#include <map>
int main()
{
  const map<int,int> test;
  return test[0];
}

Is this program ill-formed or will it return 0? I havent got
the standard in my hands, but my implementation tells me it
is ill-formed. But my gut feeling is that this should be
well-formed and legal. (Well... why shouldn't it?)


I think it is a major defect in std::map.
It should return 0, of course - a temporary
map::value_type::second_type()


Why?

The problem, of course, is that operator[] returns a reference.
What would the reference refer to? It can't be a temporary.

One possibility would be to overload with an operator[]() const,
which returned a value.

as an example VS 2005 gives me that:
1>...blablabla.cpp(15) : error C2678: binary '[' : no operator found
which takes a left-hand operand of type 'const
Parameter::ParametersMap' (or there is no acceptable conversion)


Which is correct. In std::map, you cannot use operator[] on a
const map. And I agree that it is rather a pain. In my own,
pre-standard hash maps, operator[] returned a pointer, which was
null if the element wasn't present. Alternatively, you could
use an exception. Or even provide a contains function and make
it a fatal error to use operator[] with a key where contains
returns false.

--
James Kanze GABI Software
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