Re: [boost] Interest in library for nested containers?

Subject: Re: [boost] Interest in library for nested containers?
From: Alberto Marnetto (alberto.m.dev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-01-28 10:12:51

Vee Kay <vkicefire <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> What would this offer over Boost.MultiArray?
> 

My library and Boost.Multidim are actually orthogonal: the latter offers a 
specific family of containers, while the former is a collection of 
algorithms for generic programming with arbitrary container types.

As an example, say one needs a template function which copies a nested 
container of unknown type T into an appropriate boost::multi_array. Using 
only STL and Boost this is not easy, as one has to heavily use 
metaprogramming to obtain the template parameters of the target multi_array 
(scalar type and dimensionality), and then more convolutions with recursion 
are needed to actually implement the copy. With multidim the same function 
can be written in about 10 lines, as the library provides all the requested 
functionalities: dimensionality() and scalarType() to determine the 
appropriate multi_array instantiation, bounds() to correctly size it, and 
flattening views to copy source to destination with a single 'for' loop.

Here I have somewhat cheated, since I wrote multidim specifically to solve 
such kind of problems, but nonetheless I hope to have shown how my code 
could add functionality to Boost and cooperate nicely with its 
components.

Regards,
Alberto Marnetto