[boost] Ion Gaztañaga's Intrusive Library

From: Tom Brinkman (reportbase_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-16 11:26:45

I use STL now like its second nature.  As the Intrusive library proposes to
be an alternative to STL for some situations, I am intrigued.  I have no
background with intrusive containers so I'm not shur why I would use one.  I
scanned the documentation, and still do not feel like I would know when to
use Intrusive and when to use STL.    Learning STL is a huge commitement of
time and energy, so I think that people might be reluctant to give Intrusive
a look without a strong and clear reason why.

Here is the introduction from the documentation:

*"Boost.Intrusive* is a library presenting some intrusive containers to the
world of C++. While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they
became more and more forgotten in C++ due to the presence of the standard
containers, which don't support intrusive techniques. *Boost.Intrusive* not
only reintroduces this technique to C++, but also encapsulates the
implementation in STL-like interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard
containers can easily use *Boost.Intrusive*. Like their STL-counterparts,
intrusive containers use template parameters to control the stored data
types and some special aspects of intrusive containers."

This is not adequate for a motivating introductory discussion about why and
where I should use boost::intrusive.  Give a couple of hello-world
motivating examples of where STL falls short and why boost::intrusive is
better.  Get the reader excited about why boost::intrusive is "cool".