Re: [Boost-users] [Accumulators] Are all statistics lazilyevaluated by default?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [Accumulators] Are all statistics lazilyevaluated by default?
From: Pete Bartlett (pete_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-05-12 16:43:11

Eric Niebler wrote:
>Hi,
>
>The accumulators library doesn't mandate laziness or eagerness. As 
>you've noticed, some accumulators come in lazy or eager flavors. Each 
>accumulator defines an operator() that accepts a sample and a result() 
>function that extracts the result. Whether the bulk of the work gets 
>done in operator() (eager) or in result() (lazy) is up to you.
>
>HTH,

Thanks for the reply, Eric. It's great that the framework doesn't force
things one way or the other. I was particularly interested in some of the
statistics supplied with the library. With your handy hint for determining
laziness (i.e. operator() or result() ), I see in the code that moment<> is
eager. It's just a nit, but the documentation for those statistics would be
improved IMO if they stated that - this might be as easy as a blanket
statement that supplied statistics are eager unless otherwise stated.

For my purposes, I need lazy_moment<> which thanks to the framework you've
come up with is very straightforward to implement. Then things like
lazy_skewness and lazy_kurtosis will rapidly follow. These will have near
identical implementations to the existing skewness and kurtosis statistics
with the exception that all moment<n>s will be replaced by lazy_moment<n>s.
Half of me thinks there could be value in templating over the "moment type"
in such cases but perhaps that is over-engineering. In any case, if I did
offer up lazy versions, might there be interest in including them in the
library itself?

Pete