On Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:56:55 -0500, Kagamin <s...@here.lot> wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
That all being said, I'd like to make a motion that should simplify
everyone's life - if only for a bit. I'm thinking of making all
containers classes (either final classes or at a minimum classes with
only final methods). Currently containers are implemented as structs
that are engineered to have reference semantics. Some collections use
reference counting to keep track of the memory used.
Thinking about this I've found an interesting issue:
---
void foo(int[int] aa)
{
aa[2]=2;
}
int main()
{
int[int] aa;
//aa[1]=1; //uncomment this and it will work
foo(aa);
assert(aa[2]==2);
return 0;
}
---
That's been discussed very much in the past. There is no good solution,
and it's one of the good reasons to make collections classes with clearly
defined lifetimes.
I can't find the thread that talks about this, but I think it was over a
year ago that I brought up this subtlety when people were wondering what
the correct implementation for containers should be -- struct or class.
-Steve
