Re: [boost] Re: Reference documentation

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-31 13:57:43

At 10:35 AM 10/31/2002, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:

 >Noah Stein writes:
 >
 >>> Kevin S. Van Horn:
 >>
 >>> Does it matter to the user whether the signature of f is
 >>> "void f(foo_t)" or "void f(foo_t const &)"?  [...]
 >>
 >> Isn't a function signature in the API part of the interface and not the
 >> implementation?
 >
 >I used to think so, but my experience with generic programming and
 >some of Andrei's comments on this list have caused me to modify my
 >opinion.  From GP we learn that what is important is the _valid
 >expressions_ -- that is, the syntax and semantics of component usage --
 >rather than the component's declaration.  For example, all we care is 
that
 >vector<int>::iterator is a valid type expression (along with requirements 

 >on objects of this type); we don't care whether it's a nested class of
 >vector<int> or just a typedef.

Or compiler magic!

There were some discussions of this at the C++ committee meeting last week. 
Some upcoming proposals for library components may be hopelessly detailed, 
complex, verbose, error-prone, etc, if specified at the function signature 
level.  So they may only be specified at higher levels like valid 
expressions.

--Beman