Re: [Bloom] review starts on 13th of May

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2025-05-23 13:59:59

On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 11:24 AM Joaquin M López Muñoz via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> I've been tempted to introduced an insert_hash_value method, but this looks
> mighty dangerous for the casual user.

I am all for creating simple but usable interfaces, yet we need to be
careful about who is in our target audience. "Casual" users of Bloom
filters will be more technically savvy than casual users of say, vectors.
You can go your entire career without ever using or hearing about Bloom
filters.

`insert_hash_value` is an important function for setting filter entries in
more than one container without re-computing digests.. Eventually someone
is going to want this API.

> It's there just for consistency with container APIs. It also supports the
> incredibly unlikely case of uses-allocator constuction, but this is
> admittedly not a real motivation:
>

I am growing increasingly convinced that the adherence to a container-like
API is providing meager returns.

> https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/uses_allocator

Since the container does not store elements, you could probably make this
library not-header-only and instead come as a compiled lib component, which
of course I would find preferable for all the benefits that compiled
libraries provide. Faster compile times, reduced executable bloat,
opportunities for increased compiler optimizations.

Thanks