On 1/19/11 9:11 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Wednesday 19 January 2011 18:36:55 so wrote:
And honestly, from the standpoint of code simplicity and
understandability,
there's a lot to be said for making copies being the default rather than
mutation. You can then use the InPlace versions if you need the boost in
efficiency.
- Jonathan M Davis
Isn't simplicity and understandability favors the in-place style on these
type of algorithms?
As Jesse Phillips said, it is same as sort.
No. I'd argue that it's clearer to see stuff like
auto newStr = replace(str, "hello", "world");
auto sorted = sort(newStr);
than to see stuff like
replace(str, "hello", "world");
sort(newStr);
If you have
replace(str, "hello", "world");
you don't know whether it's changed the value in place or if you're throwing
away a return value. However, if you have
auto newStr = replace(str, "hello", "world");
replaceInPlace(newStr, "world", "hello");
it's quite clear that the first one returns a value and the the second one does
it in place. Whereas if you have
auto newStr = replaceCopy(str, "hello", "world");
replace(newStr, "world", "hello");
the first one is clear, but the second one is only clear because seeing the
first
one makes it obvious that the second one must be doing something different.
This is a good argument, thanks Jonathan.
Andrei
