Re: std::max(unsigned, size_t), amd64 and C++0x

From:

Pete Becker <pete@versatilecoding.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++.moderated

Date:

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:44:21 CST

Message-ID:

<2008082908070911272-pete@versatilecodingcom>

On 2008-08-28 18:42:06 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> said:

Pete Becker wrote:

On 2008-08-27 22:14:08 -0400, Nick Hounsome
<nick.hounsome@googlemail.com> said:

Secondly I read somewhere recently a rant about the STL implementation
of max and why it was so complicated - It appears that for such an
intuitively simple function, max is actually extremely difficult, if
not impossible to get right in all cases.

The implementation of max is not complicated at all:

template <class T> T max(const T& t1, const T& t2) { return t1 < t2 ?
t2 : t2; }

Well the return type is a const T&, which already causes a host of
problems, such as returning a dangling reference when called with two
rvalues. Besides I'm pretty sure max wants to returns t1 once in a while
:o).

The point is that the implementation of max is not complicated, despite
the fact that I can't type it right. <g>

--
  Pete
Roundhouse Consulting, Ltd. (www.versatilecoding.com) Author of "The
Standard C++ Library Extensions: a Tutorial and Reference
(www.petebecker.com/tr1book)

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