Re: class with two dimensional array as a member (I need help)

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 13 May 2008 12:05:23 +0200
Message-ID:
<06Kdnf-UCPV4-rTVnZ2dnUVZ_oDinZ2d@posted.comnet>
* James Kanze:

On May 13, 9:18 am, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote:

* Pawel_Iks:


Just a couple of nits (and the correction of a typo), but...

<code>
class A
{
private:
     size_t myN;
     std::vector<int> myElements;

     size_t indexFor( size_t i, size_t j ) const
     {
         return myN*i + j;
     }

public:
     A( size_t n ): myN( n ), myElements( n*n ) {}

     int at( size_t i, size_t j ) const
     {
         return myElements.at( indexFor( i + j ) );


You certainly meant "indexFor( i, j )"


Yes.

. As written, it won't
compile (and wouldn't do the right thing if it did).

Also, I very much question the wisdom of using at() here.


That's the design of std::vector::at.

It may be unwise (or not!) that std::vector::at doesn't terminate the
program instead of throwing, but what it does that is absolutely not
unwise is to guarantee to /fail/ on an invalid index value, which
guarantee operator[] doesn't offer -- all operator[] has is UB.

Especially for a newbie it's therefore a good idea to use at(), and a
bad idea to use operator[], unless one knows that one's standard
library implementation guarantees failure also for operator[] -- but
in general one won't know that, and in particular, a newbie won't.

 If
there's an error in the indexing, you want an assertion failure,
not an exception. Which is what you'll get with any reasonable
implementation of std::vector<>::operator[]. But of course,
even that is only partially right, since something like 20, 0
will pass even if myN is 10. You really need to use assert in
indexFor, i.e.:

    size_t indexFor( size_t i, size_t j ) const
    {
        assert( i < myN && j < myN ) ;
        return myN*i + j;
    }


Ideally, yes, agreed.

I congratulate myself on still being able to write off-the-cuff code
that is so easily modified, so maintainable. ;-)

Cheers,

- Alf

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