Re: operator overloading ==

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 4 Mar 2010 17:19:10 CST
Message-ID:
<2718f180-e2b0-4d02-8b73-fbd38b8fc334@o3g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
On 4 Mrz., 21:09, A <aragorn1...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am writing a "vector" class. I know about the STL but I prefer to
use this as I use this to create a "matrix" class later. I read that
using the inbuilt STL to create a matrix is not the best way to do it.


This is correct, but have you considered std::valarray?

(see below)

At the moment, the class "vec" looks like this.
template <class T>
class vec {
private:
         int length;
         T *v;
public:
         vec();
         explicit vec(int n);
         vec(const T &a, int n);
         vec(const T *a, int n);
         vec(const vec &cpy);
         vec & operator=(const vec &equate);
         vec & operator=(const T &a);
         inline T & operator[](const int i);
         inline const T & operator[](const int i) const;
         inline int size() const;
         ~vec();

};

Now, I want to overload the operator == in this way. It should accept
a value (type T) say "val", and check through all the entries of this
vector say "v1" and return another vector of type bool, which has
"false" where v1 != val and "true" where v1 == val. I managed to write
it this way...

member function:
vec<bool> operator==(const T &a) const;

the code definition is:
template <class T>
vec<bool> operator==(const T &a) const {
     vec<bool> tmp(false,length);
     for(int i=0; i<length; i++) {
         if(v[i] == a) {
             tmp[i] = true;
         }
     }
     return tmp;

}


Remark: I suggest to use free function templates
instead of member functions. IMO user's would
find it rather astonishingly that they can write

vec<double> vc = ...;

bool test = vc == 1.2;

but not

bool test = 1.2 == vc;

Note also that std::valarray provides the functionality
you are describing here:

It provides the following free operator== overloads:

template<class T>
valarray<bool> operator==(const valarray<T>&, const valarray<T>&);

template<class T>
valarray<bool> operator==(const valarray<T>&, const T&);

template<class T>
valarray<bool> operator==(const T&, const valarray<T>&);

and all the other comparison functions.

This works great, but I would like to return the reference instead of
the whole vector and would like to know how to do it. I am unable to
make use of the "this" pointer as I am returning a "local vector". I
would appreciate any help with this. thank you!


No, you cannot do so: The local variable will
be destroyed, before it could be reasonably
used. You could keep an internal member of type
vec<bool> in vec<T>, but I do not recommend that.

Why do you want to do that?

[Before you mention performance issues: Have
you measured that this copy is the bottleneck
of the whole operation in your programs?]

Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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