[Boost-users] [Intrusive] List Manipulation and Management

Subject: [Boost-users] [Intrusive] List Manipulation and Management
From: Freddie Witherden (freddie_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-26 14:18:58

Hi all,

I am moderningising/porting some old Pascal code. The code makes  
extensive use of an intrusive singly-linked structure termed a node.

In order to replicate this idiom in C++ I have been investigating the  
Intrusive library. However, I have several questions about list  
manipulation and memory management. Firstly, in the code being ported  
all nodes can be thought of as being heap allocated. The following is  
extremely common (pseudo-code):

Node* afunction(...);
[...]
Node* tail;
link(tail, afunction(...));

This is rather nice as in O(1) you can append a returned list to your  
current list. However, I am unsure how I would accomplish this in  
Boost Intrusive. I can not seem to find a way to create the somewhat  
fragile intrusive::list from just a node (be it singly or doubly  
linked). The list class also seems to take T& as opposed to T* when  
pusing to the front/back of the list. My experience of intrusive  
structure in C was that you'd always take a pointer when adding a new  
link.

Secondly, when dealing with heap allocated items, which need to be  
deleted, the current code uses a while loop to call each nodes  
destructor. What is the intrusive equivalent?

Of course, I am open to ideas/suggestions about better ways to  
accomplish the above tasks :)

Regards, Freddie.