On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:11 PM, gtsml owevwr <gtsml.owevwr@googlemail.com>wrote:

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I don't know, but if it did what would you have it do? Surely it lacks one for the same reason that references must be initialised?

Yes, that's absolutely right, I just realized that multi_array_ref exactly mimic the C++ ref (probably obvious).

I originally thought that multi_array_ref will solve the problem I had with multi_array ownership: the memory chunk I need to work with is already owned by another class. But multi_array_ref is too restrictive for my purpose. As I said, I need to pass a vector of those and that's just not possible.

I'm not explaining it too well but the bottom line is that from my perspective multi_array_ref is: - good because it doesn't own the data - bad because it act as a ref: - no default constructor - operator= is a deep copy

Ideally, I'm looking for what most people call "a view". Probably playing with words here, but definitely, multi_array_ref is not what I am looking for.

Perhaps, but multi_array & multi_array_ref do contain the notion of a view. They're used to generate slices through the array, but I think it would be ok to construct a slice which is the whole array, and that would be your view I believe. - Rob. -- ACCU - Professionalism in programming - http://www.accu.org

Multi_array view has not default constructor, so I'm stuck with the same problem. I guess in the end this is a matter of taste. multi_array seems to be designed so that objects are always valid at all time. I'm sure it has lots of advantages, still, for lightweight object such as a view or multi_array_ref, that might not be necessary. Ok, I think the only solution left is to use pointers to multi_array_ref, that should work. I'd be able to do something along that line (not tested): std::vector<int> memoryChunk0; std::vector<int> memoryChunk1; { std::vector<multi_array_ref*> v; v.push_back(new multi_array_ref( <ctor from memoryChunk0 > )); v.push_back(new multi_array_ref( <ctor from memoryChunk1 >)); myFunction(v); BOOST_FOREACH( multi_array_ref* ma, v) { delete ma; } }