Re: std::string bad design????

From:

"Le Chaud Lapin" <jaibuduvin@gmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++.moderated

Date:

3 Jan 2007 15:40:16 -0500

Message-ID:

<1167853445.977152.296040@n51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>

Mirek Fidler wrote:

Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

James Kanze wrote:

Most of my containers
(non-tree) have indexing operations using unsigned int as the index, so

What is the point of maintaining internal iterators then?

The best I can say is that, for me, it creates the right "mood" when
using the containers.

For example, let's say you have a map, that maps names to telephone
numbers

Associative_Set::<String__, Phone_Number> phonebook;
// Add several entries to phonebook.

, and I want to change the telephone number of "Le Chaud Lapin".
Instead of having an "update key value function", I first "locate" the
row that contains my name, then assign to the right-hand-side of the
located element:

phonebook.locate("Le Chaud Lapin");
phonebook.RHE() = "08 70 35 19 38";

std::map has essentially the same thing using operator[], but there is
no memory of where the marker lies. And as far as the multiple
iterators situation, that is extremely rare in my code. I might use it
in GUI development, for example, then even then, I must use keys
instead of iterators because of the well-known GUI snapshot problem.

So have a bunch of ::seek_**** functions that move the internal marker
around. If you have a container that is not a sequence (this was the
word I was looking for instead of 'linear' earlier), then you cannot
use indexing. For example, you have a hierarchy, it does not make
sense to have an unsigned int index:

Hierarchy h;
h[8]; // Does not make sense.

(Other than that, welcome to U++ containers paradigm - using int as
index everywhere instead of iterators is what we do ;)

I noticed in your code that you use int throughout. Ever considered
unsigned int instead?

-Le Chaud Lapin-

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