> > > That's why it hands you a pointer to the value, because you can test the > > > pointer > > > for NULL; but that's it. > > > IOWs, the pointer returned by optional is conceptually a handle, not a > > > pointer. > > > That's why I like the member function peek() much better than get(). > > > > I still much prefer the standard get(), even if I bought into the rest of > > the rationale. It's what people expect because of std::auto_ptr. > > > I see. > I counted 2(two) in favor of get(), and one (me :-) in favor of peek(). > I'll be democratic on this one, though I hope I can get more counts.
For what its worth, I vote in favor of value semantics. It seems much easier to me to remember to call initialized when I want to test validity than it does to remember which of *, peek, get, get_value to use in which case. Also, the fact that I can assign a non pointer value to a smart-pointer is kinda strange. To me, it just doesn't fit the smart pointer mold and the interface is confusing because it is trying to shape an elephant into a rhino -- yeah, their close, but shaping a hippo to a rhino might be easier. Therefore, I urge you to reconsider value semantics as I think those examples were much cleaner and clearer than the examples I have been seeing. Thanks, Tanton _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
