Re: [boost] [contract] toward N3351 concepts

Subject: Re: [boost] [contract] toward N3351 concepts
From: Lorenzo Caminiti (lorcaminiti_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-10-10 04:50:25

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:57 AM, Andrzej Krzemienski
<akrzemi1_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>
>> P.S. I just have wild idea - what about axioms for function's arguments?
>> i.e. not on types, but on values.
>> Maybe some kind of axiomatic_assert.
>> For instance that can be used to prevent pointers aliasing ("restrict"
>> keyword in C99):
>> void* memcpy( void* dest, const void* src, size_t count )
>> {
>>     axiomatic_assert( do_not_overlap(dest,src,count) );
>>     // ...
>> }
>>
>
> Is this not the same thing as preconditions in contract programming and
> Lorenzo's Boost.Contract library?

I think it is (of course, Boost.Contract preconditions are better
because in declarations, const-correct, etc).

On this topic, I still didn't give up the desire of generating
preconditions from axioms and checking them at run-time. N3351 says
not to do so because axioms are not constant-correct but given that
axioms only alter dummy variables declared within the concepts and not
in user code, I don't see why that is a problem (it'd be like allowing
preconditions to declare and alter local variables, the state of the
user program outside the contract code will still remain unchanged).
The major issue I see so far with generating and checking
preconditions from axioms is that axioms are programmed using "magic"
operations like eq, <=>, is_valid, etc that cannot be implemented :(

Thanks,
--Lorenzo