Re: prevent assignement from a vector

From:
Barry <dhb2000@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:53:51 +0800
Message-ID:
<fe4n74$9an$1@news.cn99.com>
mosfet wrote:

Hi,

In one my class I would like to give access to one of my buffer so I
have declared something like this :

vector<char>& RespData = pWebResp->get_RawBuffer();


I guess that you have a member of vector<char> in pWebResp.
assume that pWebResp is of WebResp* type;
then you can let /WebResp/ non-copyable by declare /operator=/ and
copy-ctor private members of /WebResp/.

The problem is caller can also write this :

vector<char> RespData = pWebResp->get_RawBuffer();


Oh, then you have to use a wrapper for std::vector<char>
class NonCopyVector
   : public std::vector<char>
{
private:
   NonCopyVector(NonCopyVector const&);
   NonCopyVector& operator= (NonCopyVector const&);
};

I guess someone will say, don't inherit from vector.

OK,
but why bot just use

vector<char>* pResp = pWebResp->get_RawBuffer();
// return pointer then reference

If you still likes return by reference

OK,

class VectorRef
{
public:
    typedef std::vector<char>& ref_type;
    VectorRef(ref_type ref) : ref_(ref) {}
    operator ref_type() { return ref_; }
private:
    ref_type ref_;
};

then
VectorRef dataRef = pWebResp->get_RawBuffer();

but you have to explicit cast to std::vector<char>& type before calling
its member functions

(static_cast<std::vector<char>&>(dataRef)).begin();

/////////////////////

IMO, change to return pointer is better.

and in this case will it copy my buffer into RespData ?
If yes how can I prevent this behavior ?

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