Re: [boost] [range] adaptors and member functions pointers

Subject: Re: [boost] [range] adaptors and member functions pointers
From: Jeffrey Lee Hellrung, Jr. (jeffrey.hellrung_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-16 14:56:43

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Neil Groves <neil_at_[hidden]>wrote:

> Boosters,
>
> I am considering my position on this patch. I can see that it is pleasant
> syntactic sugar, but the reason I consciously omitted this was that it
> suffers from combinatorial explosion. I feel that one of the nice aspects
> of the current Boost.Range design is that it reduces combinatorial
> explosion by breaking down items into their constituent orthogonal parts.
>
> However I am reconsidering since there are a growing number of people
> requesting this feature, and perhaps the pragmatic convenience outweighs
> the slightly theoretical design concern. I need to make some effort to
> tackle some of the Boost.Range suggestions that have been accumulating
> during a period of ill health. I apologize for slow responses. It is
> important, to me, to make interface changes that I do not later regret.
> This needs some further investigation and thought.
>

My unrequested opinion: First, I understand the motivation. However, I
think it would be inconsistent and confusing if some libraries in Boost
treated pointers-to-member-functions specially while others did not. And I
don't see all of Boost moving to specially support
pointers-to-member-functions. Also, the workaround is seriously really not
so bad (explicitly wrapping with mem_fn), especially given C++'s general
penchant for verbosity.

My 2c,

- Jeff