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

From: Jonathan Wakely (cow_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-05-06 05:52:11

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 05:15:56AM -0500, Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:

> Thorsten Ottosen writes:
> 
> > "Aleksey Gurtovoy" <agurtovoy_at_[hidden]> wrote in message news:073d01c43295$1d7354b0$6401a8c0_at_metacomm.com...
> > | Pavol Droba writes:
> >
> > | > 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.
> >
> > what would you use for sequence then?
> 
> Well, I don't have an ultimate answer, but here's a couple of candidates:
> 
>     Range
>     Iterator Range
>     View
>     Series
>     Succession

These terms are not synonymous. Some imply an ordering, others do not.

The standard's "Sequence" concept has a definite ordering, neither
"Collection" not "Container" imply any ordering.

My dictionary defines collection as "an accumulated assortment of things
of a particular type" - which sounds ok for this concept. There's no
implication of containing or owning the things, so the fact that VB
(or CS in general) have used the term to describe ownership is a fault
in VB, not the word!

> > | In CS terminology, collections are inherently
> > | associated with storage;
> >
> > can give any examples of this CS terminology?
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/yr3bb

I don't think there's a good case for either side of the argument.
Several of the sites you give as examples of "Collection" implying storage
contradict your point:

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/arch/people/j-sargeant/ufolib/node5.html

There Sequence is an ordered Collection, which fits both the STL terms
and the proposal for "Collection Traits".

IMHO the example of range_view(0,100) could happily be called a
ForwardCollection - there's no containment but there's a definite
ordering.

jon