Re: [boost] Re: Re: Re: [string algo formal review]

From: Pavol Droba (droba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-03 08:04:19

On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 02:27:43PM +0200, Peter Dimov wrote:

[snip]
 >
> > my thought was that if it was heavily used, it was because it did
> > serve a real need and removal was not necessary. If only a few people
> > used it, it wouldn't be hard to depricate it.
> 
> No, not really. Consider the case where the same functionality canbe
> accomplished in three different ways, two of them redundant. There will be
> users that depend on either.
> 
> For a concrete example from the string algorithms library, consider erase_*
> vs replace_* with an empty replacement, or erase_range versus the member
> function erase.

Still, sometimes the redundancy can be handy if such a feature is used frequently.
For instance erase_* is slightly more efficient then replace_* and it is simplier
to write.

However is a redundacy bring more problems then benfits, there is no reason to support it.

Pavol