Re: [boost] Another proposal for Bimap and Boost.MultIndex

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-05-07 14:48:37

Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
> Jeff Garland wrote:
>> Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
> 
>>> - I would srongly consider making the interface a refinement of std::map 
>>> to allow drop in-replacement, and to minimize surprises for people
>>>
>>> - Letting operator[]() work with Key1 and Key2 seems like a bad thing: 
>>> what if the types are the same? What if the types are implicitly 
>>> convertible to eachother (seems error-prone).
>>
>> It seems like a nice convenience in the case where the key and the value 
>> are different.  I think it would be fine if it's documented in bold 
>> print in the docs. Certainly it creates is for the cut/paste programmers 
>> that just try to follow an existing example with different key types and 
>> then change it to be the same.
>>
> 
> My concerns where also with keys that can be *implicitly* converted
> to eachother, say, int and unsigned.

Oh yes, that's a good point.  I think I'm in agreement now -- that 
interface is probably just too dangerous.

> 
>> 1) change name of mbimap_one_to_many --> perhaps multi_bimap_1_to_m
> 
> FWIW, I think bimap and bimultimap make a good basis. This would allow 
> for bimap_1_to_m and bimultimap_1_to_m

Yep, even better.  Wonder if spelling it out a bit more would be even 
clearer.

   bidirectional_map_1_to_m
   bidirectional_multimap_m_to_m

seems a bit too much, while

   bidir_map_1_to_m
   bidir_multimap_m_to_m

seems about right.

Jeff