Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
Anyway, if the convention of range-based algorithms should be "always return [found,end)", it raises the question why we think this range is more imoprtant than [begin,found) (and some of the others).
The natural answer is of course: it is not more important or more fundamental.
Therefore it is natural to investigates means to return the slices you need. We have already seen that seperate slice functions cannot be always be safe unless they require the use of a temporary, thus defeating the much purpose of ranges.
This is a very interesting question, and one that I admit I haven't given enough consideration. My reasoning for wanting find() to return [found,end) is that it makes it easy to compose this algorithm with another that continues searching in the remainder of the sequence. But consider find_end() which finds the /last/ occurrence. Applying the same reasoning, should it return [begin,found)? IMO that's a wrinkle that would trip people up. What really is the guiding principle here? No answers, just questions. -- Eric Niebler Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com