On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 08:32:32AM -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
Pavol Droba <droba@topmail.sk> writes:
[snip]
There are operations that are natural only to sequences like push_front/back() front/back() pop_front()/back.
Those are not sequence operations. Alex Stepanov defined "Sequence" for us long before this library:
http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/Sequence.html
and the standard contains this definition:
Table 67---Sequence requirements (in addition to container) ______________________________________________________________________________ expression return type pre/post-condition assertion/note ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ X(n, t) post: size() == n. X a(n, t); constructs a sequence with n copies of t. ______________________________________________________________________________ X(i, j) post: size() == distance between i and j. X a(i, j); constructs a sequence equal to the range [i,j). ______________________________________________________________________________ a.insert(p,t) iterator inserts a copy of t before p. ______________________________________________________________________________ a.insert(p,n,t) void inserts n copies of t before p. ______________________________________________________________________________ a.insert(p,i,j) void pre: i,j are not iterators into a. inserts copies of elements in [i,j) before p. ______________________________________________________________________________ a.erase(q) iterator erases the element pointed to by q. ______________________________________________________________________________ a.erase(q1,q2) iterator erases the elements in the range [q1,q2). ______________________________________________________________________________ a.clear() void erase(begin(), end()) post: size() == 0. ______________________________________________________________________________
Actualy they are: Std 23.1.1 Table 68: Optional Sequence Operation. Sure, not every sequence must have them, but for non-sequencial containers, they have no sense and that's what I wanted to say.
I'd say "Iterable" if we have to use an "-able" term. 24.1/7 suggests to me that "Range" might be OK:
Most of the library's algorithmic templates that operate on data structures have interfaces that use ranges. A range is a pair of iterators that designate the beginning and end of the computation. A range [i, i) is an empty range; in general, a range [i, j) refers to the elements in the data structure starting with the one pointed to by i and up to but not including the one pointed to by j. Range [i, j) is valid if and only if j is reachable from i. The result of the application of functions in the library to invalid ranges is undefined.
So it seems, that Range is the clear winner here. Regards, Pavol