I can't review the whole library. So I'm confining my observations to just a couple of aspects. My method is to review some section of the documentation. it looks like a critique of the documentation, but it's really observations on the underlying design of the library. In this post I'm addressing Searchable in the reference section of the documentation. Searchable
From the explanation of Type class - given a type T, I'm expecting to see some sort of list of operations such that
Searchable<T> will compile. What I see is: boost::hana::Searchable Struct Reference Type classes Description Data structures that can be searched. Searchables have a concept of keys and values. Searching is always done on the keys and the result is always the associated value. There is no requirement that the keys and values be different. Synopsis of methods constexpr auto any Return whether any key of the structure satisfies the predicate. More... … Instances and minimal complete definitions struct instance< Map > A map can be searched by its keys with a predicate yielding a boolean Integral. More... struct instance< Maybe > Instance of Searchable for Maybes. More... struct instance< Set > The keys and the values of a Set are its elements; the Searchable instance follows naturally from that. More... My first thought is: Searchable is (sort of) a C++ Concept (type constraints) "Synopsis of methods" is what we customarily refer to as "valid expressions" "Instances and minimal complete definitions" is what we customarily refer to as "models" But right away I have a problem - since "any" doesn't show a valid C++ expression at this level of the documentation I click "auto" and get: Initial value: = [](auto predicate, auto searchable) { return Searchable::instance< datatype_t<decltype(searchable)> >::any_impl(predicate, searchable); } which is totally mystifying to me. I realize that it's a C++ lambda expression. But the only reference I see to "any" is (maybe) Searchable::any_impl. I'm guessing that any_impl has some sort of code which uses predicate and searchable to to return some static_assert - or not. The usage of any_impl seems designed to hide the vary thing I'm interested it - what kind of type can I use as an argument to Searchable. This seems not at helpful to the user. Now "predicate" and "searchable" parameters are define (in text). All "searchable" says is that it's a structure to be searched - nothing about what constitutes such a structure. can std::vector<int> be used as this "searchable" parameter? don't know - and the document doesn't tell me. "predict is a little better in that it says that it's something that is called and that it returns a type fulfilling the constraints of "Logical" which itself linked (thank you). Now I have a few examples which are a little more helpful. BOOST_HANA_CONSTEXPR_LAMBDA auto odd = [](auto x) { return x % 2_c != 0_c; }; So now I see what a predicate is supposed to look like - in this case it's a function which returns a bool. The usage of auto certainly isn't helpful here. The syntax x % 2_c != 0_c is suggestive. It seems that 2_c and 0_c refer to integer constants 2 and 0 respectively. I'm sort of wondering why we can't just use 2 and 0 themselves since it seems we're using constexpr here. BOOST_HANA_STATIC_ASSERT(any(odd, list(1, 2))); The above is interesting. From the explanation of type class I expect this to trap at compile time - or not depending upon the type of list. First of all, I don't know whether this refers to std::list or some type of compile time list of types. Again the documentation leaves me mystified. Documentation BOOST_HANA_STATIC_ASSERT leaves me even more befuddled. It says that it resolves to either static_assert or assert depending on whether the argument is a constexpr or not. An interesting idea. But here we're inside the Searchable type class definition - so wouldn't it make more sense to invoke static_assert directly? The most confusing thing about the example is that Searchable is never mentioned. Isn't the point of defining a Typeclass (C++ concept)?. How it envisioned that this be used. Here is what I would expect to see using our customary way of looking at things in the customary way. I realize that it's not an exact match but it's the best I can do from looking at the documentation. #include "boost/concept/assert.hpp" // define concept Searchable template struct<class S, class P, class T> struct Searchable { BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((std::UnaryPredicate<P>)); BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((std::Sequence<T>)); }; // define any for searchable types template<class S, class P, class T> constexpr bool any(const S &s, const P & p){ BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((Searchable<S, P>)); } // example auto constexpr odd = [](auto x) { return x % 2 != 0; }; ?::list<1, 2, 3> l; static_assert( any(list, odd) ); // should not trap ?::list<2, 4, 6> l2; static_assert( any(list, odd) ); // should trap with error at compile time There are lots of "holes" in my example above, I think this more or less captures what you have in mind. But it's much simpler to understand and use. I confess I've failed to understand the runtime aspects of your library. This is true even though I have worked with fusion more than most and a lot with MPL. I think this should be easy for me - but it's not. BTW - I only used "Searchable" as it happened to be the first one I looked at. Personally I don't believe that thinks like "Searchable", and "Sortable" don't belong as models of type constraints. Using "Sortable as a quick example, my complaint is that it's tautological. Something is defined here as "Sortable" if you can sort it. Actually something like "Sortable should be defined as: template<class Iterator> void quicksort(Iterator begin, Iterator end){ BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((RandomAccessIterator<Iterator>)); BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((LessThanComparable<Iterator::value_type)); … } while a different sorting algorithm void mergesort(C & c){ BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((ForwardIterator<Iterator>)); BOOST_CONCEPT_ASSERT((LessThanComparable<Iterator::value_type)); } So the the idea of "Sortable" doesn't make any sense when not coupled with the data structure which holds the data. Although my example above is based on "Sortable" - it really applies to any type constraints with names like "Searchable", "Foldable", etc. Robert Ramey -- View this message in context: http://boost.2283326.n4.nabble.com/Hana-Searchable-tp4665987.html Sent from the Boost - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.