So here are some of the questions I would like to pose to the community about the behavior and interface of the pointer_plus_bits data structure:
I think it should look, where practical, like either a tuple<T*, bitset<N>> or a tuple<T*, bool, bool, ...>
Then it doesn't need to provide any pointer-like operations.
The class is called "pointer... plus bits". If the abstraction isn't at least a little bit pointer-like, then the name of the data type is duplicitous at best. I think that some of the suggestions treat lightly the attachment that programmers have to the meanings of names. I think it might be worthwhile to provide an interface that "explodes" the data type into a tuple. I actually prefer the idea of offering methods that return the pointer and bitfield as component parts. I believe these could also return proxies to allow assignment to and from the ptr type. But if you don't at least provide a boolean cast and a dereference operator, then I don't think you should be using "pointer" in the name of the class. Andrew Sutton andrew.n.sutton@gmail.com