In the STL world, writing container-independent code is generally
shunned (see e.g.
http://www.informit.com/content/images/0201749629/items/item2-2.pdf).
One problem is a very small intersection between the functionalities
offered by the various STL containers, and the conceptual organization
that is weaker than that of iterators.
A worse problem is iterator invalidation rules, something that we'll
need to address too. I'm thinking that the best defense is a strong
offense, and I plan to define the following naming convention:
Methods such as insert, remove, pushFront, pushBack, removeFront,
removeBack, are assumed to affect the container's topology and must be
handled in user code as such.
In addition to those, a container may also define functions named after
the above by adding a "soft" prefix (e.g. softInsert, softRemove...)
that are guaranteed to not affect the ranges currently iterating the
container.
Generic code that needs specific iterator (non-)invalidation rules can
use softXxx methods, in confidence that containers not supporting it
will be ruled out during compilations.
Sounds good?
Andrei
- Container insertion and removal Andrei Alexandrescu
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