On 05/26/2010 08:30 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
On 05/26/2010 06:07 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
Looks interesting overall. There is one function, however, which makes no
sense to me: removeElement()/stableRemoveElement().
So, it basically removes a random element from the container? It could be
quite consistent as to which element it removes from the container (it
being implementation-dependent), but effectively, it removes a random
element? What's the point of that? I can't remember the last time - if
ever - that I wanted to remove an element from a container and I didn't
care which. Or am I misunderstanding what it does?
- Jonathan M Davis
If the container is a worklist with items to work on, it sometimes
doesn't matter in which order you extract them.
Andrei
Well, my first reaction would be that that would be needed rarely enough
that there's no point in putting it in the API. You could just use
removeFront() or removeBack(), or you could grab a random element from the
container and remove that.
SList can't implement removeBack() and Array can't implement
removeFront(). Only a few containers can implement grabbing a random
element within the complexity constraints of removeElement().
But maybe there are container types where it
really makes sense, and having it in the API could be useful. Still, it
strikes me as a really weird function to have. Of course, if you really
think that it's going to be useful, leave it in. Unlike pretty much all the
others though, it's not one I ever expect to use.
It might not be weird if you want to write container-independent code.
Andrei
