On 11.10.2010 11:32, Matthew Gwynne wrote:
Hi,
I'm working within a C++ library which makes extensive use of the range concept, and also of boost::size. The current version of the library makes use of boost 1_38, however, updating to the newer versions of boost, I've had to replace boost::size with boost::distance as some of the ranges involved, such as std::set don't have random access iterators.
However, this presents a problem - it's not really acceptable within our application to have linear time complexity for the size operation on sets when the size member function of the set container is constant time, so I'm looking for some advice.
Are we misusing the range concept here and should be using something else?
Well, either you're expecting constant-time size for subsets of set, or you're using range to represent the entire set. The former is a wrong expectation, the latter could be called a misuse, yes. The alternative depends on what exactly you're doing currently that requires the size. Sebastian