Phil Endecott wrote:
- It would be good if the docs were explicit about this being a thin wrapper around your existing std::sort, and identifying those algorithms that are not so thin.
Actually, I believe sort(c) calls c.sort() if it exists. So it's not just std::sort.
You then have this example for sorting and removing duplicates:
boost::erase( vec, boost::unique<boost::return_found_end>( boost::sort(vec) ) );
Err... yuk. Why can't I write:
unique(vec);
Or maybe
unique(sort(vec));
or
sort(vec); unique(vec);
My point is that std::unique only has its "move duplicates to the end" behaviour because the conventional interface with a pair of iterators doesn't let you change the size of the container. Now that we have a unique() that takes a container we don't need that restriction.
Not a container, a range. You can't remove elements from a range, only move those to the end and change the end. However, uniqued(vec) returns a new lazy range without duplicates (if the range is sorted), and unique_copy(vec) returns a new range without duplicates.