2009/11/25 Edward Diener <eldiener@tropicsoft.com>

Yes, of course. See above. I just do not agree that not providing the obvious constructor is good because it "maintains symmetry". Many things in programming are good because they provide ease-of-use and my suggestion is an obvious case of that.

In my opinion the constructor you propose is not obvious, but rather very subtle. Explicit 'left' or 'right' during the conversion from std::map makes the intent more explicit and thus improves readability.

I do understand that it might be a matter of personal preference.

Roman Perepelitsa.