At 06:38 PM 8/21/2003, David Abrahams wrote:
I need to make a mapping over paths. Is there any important reason there's no operator< provided?
I don't think it has been discussed. I've had the need myself, but worked around it by using path::string() to generate the key.
There were a number of discussions about operator== and !=. They can be subject to serious abuse and misunderstanding, and so are left out. I'm still not sure if that was the right decision, so might be willing to review it.
Anyhow, we should be able to support maps and sets of paths. I'll try to give it some thought in the morning when I'm wider awake.
If it isn't safe to even have the equality operators, then having the ordered inequality operators may not be safe either. If David has an ordering he wants to use in mind, then a custom comparison function object class can be made.
I've seen quite a few requests for operator<() for class that don't have it (e.g. std::complex<>) just for the purpose of using it as an element type of an associative container. Forcing a type of have such an operator, even when it's inappropriate (i.e. the type doesn't suggest an overwhelmingly-natural ordering), defeats the purpose of the associative container class templates having comparator types in the first place!
Daryle
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