Hm, what's the point in having such collections? The pointers in a container would refer to data that is stored somewhere. Since we want to minimize side effects, the only valid use of a pointer container would be to store a set of polymorphic objects. Even now, the ownership question is raised. So, one should use a smart pointer. To adapt the pointers for the standard algorithm of the STL, one could use a projection iterator adapter. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bohdan" <yg-boost-users@m.gmane.org> Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lib.boost.user Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2002 12:49 AM Subject: collection container
Has boost any plans on creating container, that holds data by pointer, not by value?
Rationale: It is impossible to use normally vector<...> for types that do not have copy constructor. Interface of vector< shared_ptr<...> > doesn't seems to be very convenient( for example with std::algorithms ). And most of all it is not good idea to show vector< shared_ptr<...> > interface to user of my lib, that wants to have container::iterator with normal behavior.
AFAIK majority of existing libraries have/need such container ? As to me it is strange that neither stl nor boost have such class. I'm missing 'something' and there are important reasons for not doing this ?