Pavol Droba <droba@topmail.sk> writes:
Hi,
Purpose of this library is to unify an access to an arbitrary "collection". Concept of the collection is defined in a paper which is currently perfectly hidden in boost/libs/utility/Collection.html
Major benefit it brings is, that it is possible to define non-intrusive, yet uniform stl-like access to containers where is would not be possible otherwise. This allows us to create generic algorithm, that work on wider range of containers, not just those in stl.
container traits (or collection traits as it should be renamed) concept is heavily used by string_algo library. For instance the library can handle c-char arrays in much the same way as std::string
I hope we can move away from the use of the term "traits" to mean "any old non-intrusive interface that can be customized for a particular type". Behaviors like push_back, IMO, just don't belong in something called "traits" -- traits is a very passive term. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com