Re: [boost] [gsoc] Pointer Plus Bits Behavior and Interface

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc] Pointer Plus Bits Behavior and Interface
From: Andrew Sutton (andrew.n.sutton_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-16 00:00:58

>
> > But if you don't at least provide a boolean cast and a dereference
> operator,
>  > then I don't think you should be using "pointer" in the name of the
> class.
> >
> Meh, you could call it pointer_int_pair, and nobody would complain about
> the "pointer" in the name. (PointerIntPair is LLVM's version of this.)

You could if you were implementing a pointer/int pair, which is exactly what
that data type does.

This reinforces my point. I believe that you could use  Brian's framework to
create a typedef consisting of a compound pointer/bitfield representation
and call it something similar. Regardless of its name it's still going to
have a tuple-like or component-like interface to access the pointer and the
bitfield. (Brian, please correct me if I'm wrong).

I would think that the point of creating this particular data type
(pointer_plus_bits) was to emphasize the pointer aspect and less so the
"pair". If you really want a pointer/int tuple, then create one. If you want
a pointer plus some bits, then I think this would be the place to look--but
only if it worked more or less like a pointer.

Andrew Sutton
andrew.n.sutton_at_[hidden]