Re: Map losing elements!?

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 2 Oct 2008 01:09:12 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<e2ec0b78-6ed1-4377-af2c-15fe4b0fd247@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 2, 2:44 am, Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsdu...@gmx.de> wrote:

I've been trying around with a simple std::map<mytype,
unsigned> for an hour now and can't find the bug. It is my
belief that I am missing something incredibly obvious...
please help me see it.

Scenario: I created the map and inserted some elements.
Afterwards I try to iterate over them:

std::map<mytype, unsigned int> values;
/* insert some values, say 5 */

/* this will then report 5 */
std::cerr << "cnt = " << values.size() << std::endl;

for (std::map<mytype, unsigned int>::iterator j = values.begin(); j !=

=

values.end(); j++) {
        std::cerr << j->second << " -> ";
        j->first.Dump();
        std::cerr << std::endl;
}

However in the "for" loop, always only 2 items show up. I
figured something was wrong with my operator< - essentialy
"mytype" is just a container around a LENGTH byte unsigned
char[] array:

bool operator<(const mytype &Other) const {
        for (unsigned int i = 0; i < LENGTH; i++) {
                if (Other.Data[i] < Data[i]) return true;
        }
        return false;
}

Can anyone explain this behaviour?


Your comparison operator is obviously wrong. If we suppose Data
is an int[3], then what happens if you compare { 1, 2, 3 } and
{ 2, 1, 3 }. Regardless of the order, you're function returns
true, i.e. given
    Data a = { 1, 2, 3 } ;
    Data b = { 2, 1, 3 } ;
your function returns true for both a<b and b<a. One of the
requirements is that if a<b, then !(b<a). What you probably
want is something more like:

    for ( int i = 0 ;
            i != LENGTH && data[ i ] == other.data[ i ] ;
            ++ i ) {
    }
    return i != LENGTH
        && data[ i ] < other.data[ i ] ;

(In this case, your result depends entirely on the first
non-equal element, and if false if all elements are equal.)

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