Re: [boost] [Formal review] Collection Traits library

From: Aleksey Gurtovoy (agurtovoy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-05-05 06:35:31

Pavol Droba writes:
> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 09:10:48AM +0800, Joel de Guzman wrote:
> > John Torjo wrote:
> > 
> > >Hi Thorsten,
> > >
> > >about the name of the library:
> > >Not sure why it's called collection traits, since IMO it should better 
> > >be called either sequence traits, container traits, range traits or 
> > >array traits.
> > 
> > I agree. I think sequence traits is most appropriate.
> > 
> You are not quite right. Sequence concept is precisely defined in C++ standard.

Yes, and that's unfortunate, because it is essentially a dead concept -- "nobody"
writes generic code that relies on it -- that has occupied a good name. In fact, 
"Collection" is exactly the word that would perfectly fit to describe what the 
standard choose to refer to as "Sequence". I don't think going the other way 
around would be a good call. In CS terminology, collections are inherently 
associated with storage; using the term to name the concept that explicitly aims 
at representing sequences that do not necessarily have any is IMO a bad idea.

> Collection traits are not implementig this concept, they don't even implement
> full Container concept. So if would be very misleading to use the name of it.
> Collection traits are working with structures that model Collection concept,
> therfore they should be named after it IMHO.

"Collection" is an unfortunate name for the concept. Not having "Sequence" at our
disposal, it should be called "Iterator Range" or something along these lines.

--
Aleksey Gurtovoy
MetaCommunications Engineering