[boost] Coroutines and Output Iterators

Subject: [boost] Coroutines and Output Iterators
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-10 09:50:19

When one wants to generate some range of data, the usual approach is to 
write the data to some output iterator passed as an argument.

However, that approach has a few drawbacks: it is necessary to provide a 
range (often of a non-known size) to write the data on, and it will be 
possible to consider that data only once all elements have been copied 
to the output.

An alternative approach is returning a smart range which will generate 
the elements as it is being iterated. It is somewhat what the 
Boost.Range update in the review queue does.
This approach has many advantages, since storage may not be needed and 
transformations can be combined on top, avoiding unnecessary iterations.

Writing smart iterators/ranges that generate data, though, is much more 
difficult than writing generators using the previous solution, 
especially in recursive scenarios where the iterators will need to 
maintain a stack themselves.

Another solution is coroutines, which allows to return data then reenter 
later in the same context and keep going.
The results of a coroutine can then be iterated as they come, giving the 
advantages of smart iterator/ranges while keeping the syntax of output 
iterators. It is however at the cost of some stack allocation at the 
beginning (which can be improved using pools) and context switches at 
each iteration.

What I propose is thus to make an output iterator that will yield the 
data within a coroutine context.
With that solution, one writes generators as functions writing to output 
iterators, but those iterators might as well be writing to containers 
than actually yielding the result, which means the person designing the 
generator does not have the overhead of coroutines forced upon him.

The syntax would be
generate(boost::bind(&boost::transform, range, _1, f)) which would 
return a range similar to that of boost::make_transform_range(range, f).
(boost::transform being just std::transform for ranges)

The coroutine GSoC library from 2006 does offer that kind of thing, but 
not as non-intrusive output iterators. (I don't even get why it needs to 
call self.__self_exit__() at the end).
I thus propose a simple output iterator that yields on iteration be made.

By the way, what is the status of that library? I haven't heard of it 
for quite a while.