I don't know, but if it did what would you have it do? Surely it lacks one for the same reason that references must be initialised?
Yes, that's absolutely right, I just realized that multi_array_ref exactly mimic the C++ ref (probably obvious). I originally thought that multi_array_ref will solve the problem I had with multi_array ownership: the memory chunk I need to work with is already owned by another class. But multi_array_ref is too restrictive for my purpose. As I said, I need to pass a vector of those and that's just not possible. I'm not explaining it too well but the bottom line is that from my perspective multi_array_ref is: - good because it doesn't own the data - bad because it act as a ref: - no default constructor - operator= is a deep copy Ideally, I'm looking for what most people call "a view". Probably playing with words here, but definitely, multi_array_ref is not what I am looking for. Thanks, Frank