[boost] Re: Boost Array Initialization Technique

From: AlisdairM (alisdair.meredith_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-31 18:52:03

christopher diggins wrote:

> This is much more flexible and it allows us to have constructors in
> boost::array thus making it a full reversible container.

boost::array can never be a standard conforming container because it
does not support insertion/removal of elements - it is a fixed size.

When array was first proposed for TR1 we made suggestions to revise the
container concepts to support both 'fixed size' and 'dynamic'
containers.  The consensus was that this was too much fiddling just to
make array into a container.  Instead, it was accepted as-is, as a
'container-like' class template.

Aggregate initialization is an important part of the array concept,
allowing it to act largely as a plug-in replacement for language
arrays, with the bonus it can be passed by value as well as by
reference.  The main drawback here is that we cannot deduce the size of
a boost::array, as you can with a language array.

AlisdairM