Re: STL map question : directed to stl map expert(s)....

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:57:53 CST
Message-ID:
<13fb143l6m8er43@corp.supernews.com>
* Pete Becker:

On 2007-09-22 09:12:01 -0400, "Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no> said:

"Unspecified" means that any particular compiler should /document/ the
behavior for that compiler, i.e. that every conforming compiler will
provide some reasonable, documented behavior, but that different
compilers can provide different behaviors.


No, that documentation requirement is part of "implementation-defined",
and the standard doesn't use the (empty) word "reasonable".
"Unspecified" is defined in [defns.unspecified]:

    behavior, for a well-formed program construct and correct data, that
depends
    on the implementation. The implementation is not required to
document which
    behavior occurs. [ Note: usually, the range of possible behaviors is
delineated
    by this International Standard. -- end note ]


Right, thank you.

I should have taken clue from the fact that I had to post a correction
to the first article just seconds after posting that; guess I was tired.

Now I wonder what the rationale is for not requiring such a fundamental
behavior to be documented?

Searching the standard, "diagnostic messages" are required to be
documented (by being implementation-defined), ditto for the subset of
the standard library provided by a free-standing implementation, the
number of bits per byte, what an "interactive device" is (can't remember
ever seeing that documented! :-)), mapping from source code characters
to basic source character set, alignment, etc. etc.; but I fail to see
the pattern -- assuming there is one.

Cheers,

- Alf

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