Re: [boost] Interest in boost.deepcopy

Subject: Re: [boost] Interest in boost.deepcopy
From: Jeffrey Lee Hellrung, Jr. (jeffrey.hellrung_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-10-25 19:04:50

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Allan Johns <allan.johns_at_[hidden]>wrote:

> In my case I have several data types - tables, buffers, tuples, attributes
> etc. I need to be able to clone (ie deepcopy) any part of one of these
> hierarchical structures... there is no "entire structure", if you will.
>
> I understand what's being said about memory ownership, but in this case I
> have full control of my problem domain, and such a generic deep copy
> library
> would be useful and save time - otherwise I'm just going to have to
> implement deep copy behaviour inside of all my classes anyway (which is
> actually what I have at the moment). This pattern has come up several times
> before in my work, so it isn't a one-off, and the motivation is not to deal
> with cyclic dependencies (although that should probably be dealt with).
>
> Perhaps there should be a 'deep copy context' that you can create for your
> own code or share from other libraries, so for eg one library's idea of
> what
> "deep copying" an std::vector is, can differ from another library's. Would
> this address your concern over ambiguity of memory ownership?
>
> Given that this behaviour is implemented as a standard module in another
> language (python) I'm surprised it's being dismissed so easily?
>
> Allan
>
> ps -- I'm not a python programmer, just wanted to make that clear! Well I
> do
> use it but... you know what I mean.
>

It would help *me* if you gave a more concrete example of why this is
useful...I feel like you're speaking in generalities that I'm having trouble
connecting with :/  And, if it helps me, it might help others.

- Jeff