Re: question about operator[] of map

From:
Jeff Schwab <jeff@schwabcenter.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:54:04 CST
Message-ID:
<HYCdnbvyV-OWKnrXnZ2dnUVZ_r-dnZ2d@giganews.com>
ThosRTanner wrote:

On Oct 27, 6:51 am, yang <double...@gmail.com> wrote:

hi, as mentioned in effective c++, when overloading [] operator, there
should be two versions: return reference and return const reference.
However, in the overloading of [] in stl map, there is only one
version: return reference. Is there any reason why this is the case?


I think its because the map.operator[a] will create the entry a if it
doesn't already exist, so is really not very const at all.

It's also a trifle annoying because you start off thinking you can do
something like if (map[a] is defined) ..... (like in perl and
javascript)


     if (map.count(a)) ...

Or, if you prefer:

     template<typename Map_t>
     bool has_key(Map_t const& m, typename Map_t::key_type const& k) {
         return m.find(k) != m.end();
     }

     if (has_key(map, a)) ...

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