On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 1:54 PM,
I have a question regarding creating composite key/specifying length for arrays while using multi_index container based on following structure.
struct TestStruct { char firstKey[50]; char secondKeyPart[3]; uint32_t thirdKeyPart; ……Some other information…. };
Using a composite key and associated hasher/equalTo types yields some pretty long (and ugly?) types for the multi-index container/extractor/hasher/equaler. If "……Some other information…." is not too large such that TestStruct is not too expensive to construct, you're often better of using the identity key extractor, and implement the hasher and op== in terms of TestStruct itself. The only downside I see is that you must constructs a whole new TestStruct when you want to look one up instead of doing a make_tuple(part1, part2, part3), which is why I mentioned above "if TestStruct is not too expensive to construct". This is the route we followed, away from composite keys and into custom hasher/equaler of our own structs. Not sure if Joaquin also recommend that route, but it worked fine for us and makes things simpler IMHO. --DD PS: Note that the custom hash/equal functors end up being equivalent hand-written versions of the template-based composite_key_* types would have been, but then it's simple straight forward code which is easier to understand when you debug too.