Re: [boost] Re: Re: Zero Unnecessary Temporary Objects: A Revolution

From: Gabriel Dos Reis (gdr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-13 10:07:51

Daniel Frey <daniel.frey_at_[hidden]> writes:

| Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| > 
| > Howard Hinnant <hinnant_at_[hidden]> writes:
| > 
| > [...]
| > 
| > | I do not believe it is a good argument for making
| > | temporaries const.  --c.end() is not inherently unsafe.  It simply does
| > | not work if the iterator turns out to be a pointer.  This is a quirk of
| > | the language and nothing more.
| > 
| > Indeed.  I see decrementation or incrementation as part of the
| > iterator interface (supported operations) and from that perspective,
| > it makes perfect sense to say --c.end().  I see no "unsafety" in that
| > constructs.
| 
| It's not really unsafety, but it limits you in development,

Really?  Right now, it doesn't.

| e.g. you
| cannot have a "end"-object in your container and return a reference to
| it. The reference must be const in order to work safely, so if you
| change the function from
| 
|   iterator end() const;
| 
| to 
| 
|   iterator& end() const;

Well, I would say it is that change that may be a limit since I expect
an iterator to be an _object_ -- from all the various definitions I've
worked with, iterators were values.

-- Gaby