🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Pine.A32.3.91.960315223344.90639A-100000@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il>, 
<mslamm@pluto.MSCC.huji.AC.IL> says...

[ ... ] 

> This I can understand. But isn't the standard going to include an 
> implementation of the STL? 
> 
> It seems to me that only specifing the interface can lead to unexpected 
> problems. 

If the specification of the interface is too loose, it will doubtless lead to 
difficulties.  IMO, if anything the specification of STL goes a bit too far, 
getting into some issues I'd consider more implementation considerations than 
interface.  (guarantees of computational complexity being one of those areas.)

> As far as I know other parts of the standard library are descirbed with 
> the implementation. Or is the implementation I see in magazines just the 
> authors fancy?

No.  The standard describes what each function has to do, but not how it has 
to do that.  For instance, a string function might be required to return the 
position of a character in a string.  The standard doesn't say it has to use a
linear search to find it.  If you wanted to, you could pre-index your strings 
and retrieve character positions from the index.  Ultimately, as long as you 
accept the correct argument(s) and return the correct information, you're 
nearly free to implement things the way you choose.

> One more question. If the STL is part of the proposed standard, won't 
> compiler vendors HAVE to supply some implemenation of it?

If they want to conform to the C++ standard they will, as STL won't really be 
anything separate as such - it'll simply be another part of the standard like 
the string class, iostreams, etc.

OTOH, it's worth noting that conformance to standards is far from being an 
absolute.  There are lots of things that call themselves C compilers that 
aren't very close to the C standard, many FORTRAN compilers that "conform to 
FORTRAN 66 with some FORTRAN 77 extensions.", COBOL compilers that don't 
handle all of COBOL 74, etc.  

On one hand, there's little doubt that conforming to the C++ standard will be 
far more difficult than to the current FORTRAN and COBOL standards, but OTOH, 
it's quite clear that in the C/C++ market, there's a much greater push for a 
standard that's meaningful and compilers that conform to it. (In contrast to, 
for instance, the Pascal world, where saying a compiler conforms to the ANSI 
or ISO standard borders on being an insult...)
    Later,
    Jerry.
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