🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <311535F1.562A@et.se> Dan Holmsand <dan@et.se> writes:

> > Dan Holmsand <dan@et.se> writes:
> > >Is operator.() banned from the standards discussion?
> 
> I'm really sorry for reopening this old wound, but many thanks anyway
> for all the answers.
> 
> My reason for asking was my own "discovery" that the STL containers and
> algorithms are clearly overrated - sure, they are very efficient indeed
> for simple objects with trivial constructors. However, if you consider
> a vector<vector<string> >, and insert a new element at the beginning of
> the outer vector, the resulting code is clearly less than efficient
> (copy constructing all the strings of all the vectors is everything
> but efficient).
> 
> That's why I was hoping for smart references to come to the rescue when
> needed, say by redefining the original vector as
> vector<smart_ref<vector<string> > >, to gain the speed benefit of a
> faster copy constructor, while not having to rewrite all the code
> involved.

If this turns out to be important, there is nothing in the standard to
prevent the vector class from implementing copy and assignment using
copy on write, exactly as will probably happen in most implementations
of string (where copy and assignment *are* expected to be frequent
operations).

I would suggest, however, that in the above case, you are simply not
using the appropriate container.  Perhaps what you need is a list<
vector< string > >.  The whole purpose of having different types of
containers is that each represents a distinct tradeoff.
-- 
James Kanze           (+33) 88 14 49 00          email: kanze@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, Sarl., 8 rue des Francs Bourgeois, 67000 Strasbourg, France
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