On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 5:05 PM, Daniel Walker <daniel.j.walker@gmail.com> wrote: <snip> But begin(), end() and fill() need a forward iterator concept to work. In it's current form, if I have to do the analogy with a container I would say that MSF is more similar to an hash then, say, a vector or a list.
Well, it's kind of an associative container - associating a signature with a callable object. But you should pick whichever concepts you feel are best suited and would like to support and then implement them. And again Fusion's concepts may actually be a better starting point than the STL, since each function object could have a different type. It may take some work, but it would be worth it. <snip>
First step is to load the gun: Define a MSF object and assign to it the functions/functors
Second step is to shot: Use one or many of these MSF object to make the job done (call stuff, dynamic dispatch, handle containers of MSF items and so on)
Great analogy! For shooting the gun you should model function object concepts - either SGI STL or Fusion or something new if necessary. With operator() and result_of support you already have about everything a person could ask for, so this part is basically done. However, shooting the gun is useless unless it's loaded, and your current infrastructure for loading the gun is lacking. I would suggest modeling some container concept for this or Fusion's sequences or something like them. Incidentally, would you be interested in contributing this as part of a larger library for functional programming in C++? I feel like there could be synergy here with Shunsuke's Egg library. Perhaps, if the three (or more) of us put our heads together we could come up with something new and helpful that we could submit to Boost together. Daniel Walker