On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Thorsten Ottosen < thorsten.ottosen@dezide.com> wrote:
Den 05-05-2011 11:00, Olaf van der Spek skrev:
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 1:01 AM, Marsh Ray<marsh@extendedsubset.com>
wrote:
Thus, it is better to use optional<T or&> instead of pointers whenever it supplies the required operations.
When auto is available, the disadvantage of boost::optional is minimal. It's clear that some people really prefer boost::optional, so find_opt or find_optional could be provided as well.
T* has the distict advantage that it is optimally efficient, even though that optional<T&> might slightly be more type-safe.
Some dislike "naked" pointers in interfaces. I think a good guide line is that such pointer is always without ownership, and so
T* foo()
"Some" would be me. A good guideline is always to try to raise the abstraction level of our programming - Boost.optional seems to me to do that. The guide you suggest may be a good guide, but it would be better to avoid the need for a guide at all - if you can say it in code, say it in code.
is quite easy to read IMO. No need for another overload. We might as well take advantage of the fact that pointers are "optional" by default. There is no need to complicate things.
Surely this could be used as an argument for pointers instead of optionals for every use of optional. Efficiency taken to this extent seems like the wrong choice - surely we should write for clarity first and efficiency second, iff measurement suggests it's a problem. - Rob.