Re: [boost] Metaprogrammers, all of you!

Subject: Re: [boost] Metaprogrammers, all of you!
From: Eric Niebler (eric_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-13 01:31:09

On 10/12/2010 7:10 PM, David Abrahams wrote:
> At Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:40:38 -0500,
> Andrew Sutton wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I find it interesting, but also a bit sad, that the thread on
>>> metaprogramming “plumbing” is very active, while this fundamental
>>> question of abstraction and generic programming has gone unaddressed.
>>>
>>
>> ... Says the guy who, quite literally, wrote the book on metaprogramming :)
>> Sorry.
> 
> The irony is not lost on me.  But I fear I've created a monster :(
> 
>> Is it possible to distill a succinct phrasing of question being
>> posed? I think I'm having trouble reading it through the reply
>> markers. I think I get the basic gist, but I'm not sure my
>> understanding is complete enough to generate an opinion. Maybe it
>> would make a nice article for C++Next.
> 
> The question has to do with what kind of abstraction should be used to
> expose element access in segmented structures.  This short and very
> readable 1998 paper explains the problem space and offers one
> approach: http://lafstern.org/matt/segmented.pdf

Jumping in the middle here so this may not be relevant.... Here is the
beginning of a discussion on spirit-devel about segmented Fusion
algorithms that sought to apply Matt Austern's formulation to Fusion's
heterogeneous sequences:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.parsers.spirit.devel/2765

This discussion eventually led to Fusion's current (incomplete,
unmaintained) support for segmented sequences. (Although in Fusion, the
goal is not improved runtime performance, but easier-to-implement
segmented sequences and drastically lower compile-time overhead.)

We found no fundamental problems in Austern's formulation of generic
segmentation, or in our adaptation of it to meet Fusion's needs.

-- 
Eric Niebler
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com