Re: Case insensitive set of strings

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
18 Apr 2007 01:09:11 -0700
Message-ID:
<1176883751.610370.19890@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 17, 9:30 pm, Adrian <n...@bluedreamer.com> wrote:

I want a const static std::set of strings which is case insensitive
for the values.

So I have the following which seems to work but something doesnt seem
right about it. Is there a better way or any gotcha's from my code
below.


Your code has undefined behavior.

#include <iostream>
#include <functional>
#include <algorithm>
#include <set>
#include <string>
#include <iterator>


Don't forget:
    #include <cctype>
(or <locale>, if you use the toupper functions from there).

class Test
{
   public:
      void p()
      {
        std::copy(fields.begin(), fields.end(),
std::ostream_iterator<std::string>(std::cout, ","));
        std::cout << std::endl;
      }
   private:
      struct nocase_cmp : public std::binary_function<const
std::string &, const std::string &, bool>
      {
         struct nocase_char_cmp : public std::binary_function<char,
char, bool>
         {
            bool operator()(char a, char b)


The function should be const, I think.

            {
               return std::toupper(a) < std::toupper(b);


Calling the single argument form of toupper with a char as
argument is undefined behavior. The argument type is int, with
the constraint that the value of the int must be either EOF, or
in the range [0...UCHAR_MAX]. If char is signed, it won't be in
range when converted (implicitly) to int.

There are two solutions here: either explicitly convert the char
to unsigned char before calling toupper, e.g.:

    return toupper( static_cast< unsigned char >( a ) )
        < toupper( static_cast< unsigned char >( b ) ) ;

or use the two operator forms in std::ctype. (In that case, I
would use something like:

    class nocase_char_cmp
    {
    public:
        typedef std::ctype< char >
                            ctype ;
        explicit nocase_char_cmp(
                std::locale const& l = std::locale() )
            : my_ctype( &std::use_facet< ctype >( l ) )
        {
        }

        bool operator()( char a, char b ) const
        {
            return my_ctype->tolower( a ) < my_ctype->toupper( a ) ;
        }

    private:
        ctype const* my_ctype ;
    } ;

..)

If you have a lot of case insensitive comparisons, it might be
worth writing a case insensitive collate facet (or there might
even be one available ready-made); in that case, just pass an
std::locale with this facet as the fifth argument to
lexicographical_compare, and you're done with it.

            }
         };
         bool operator()(const std::string &a, const std::string &b)
         {
            return std::lexicographical_compare(a.begin(), a.end(),
b.begin(), b.end(),
               nocase_char_cmp());
         }
      };

      typedef std::set<std::string, nocase_cmp> Field_names_t;
      static const Field_names_t fields;};

const char *f[]={
   "string1",
   "string2",
   "string3",
   "STRIng1",
   "string5"};


Try throwing in some characters whose encoding results in a
negative number, and see what happens. (On my machine, just
about any accented character will do the trick. In my test
suites, I'll generally make sure that there is a =FF somewhere,
since in the most frequent encoding, it is 0xFF, which, when
stored into a char, becomes -1, or EOF. You'd be surprised how
many programs stop when they encounter this character in a
file.)

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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