Nathan Ridge wrote:
Regarding the batched insert, we have previously discussed the complexity of inserting a range. Fundamentally, however, I don't think it is acceptable to have efficient insertion ONLY in the case of the insert(begin,end) method: it is too common to want to insert several values in a loop without creating a temporary container. I'm not aware of any established (i.e. std:: or boost::) pattern for doing this:
There is no need to create a temporary container to use a method that takes a pair of iterators. With the help of the Boost.Range library and some lambdas (Boost.Phoenix or C++0x, depending on your taste and constraints), you should be able to create a lazy range view of wherever you're getting your data from in your loop.
Well, yes and no. If I show this code to a Java or C programmer, they can probably work out what it does very easily: int i = 0; while (i != 10) { container.insert(i); i = f(i); } How easily would they understand your version? There are also cases where it is fundamentally hard to write a range generator without using e.g. co-routines: void towers_of_hanoi(container& c, string from, string to, string tmp, int n) { if (n==1) { c.append(make_pair(from,to)); // "Move a disk from " from " to " to." } else { towers_of_hanoi(c,from,tmp,to,n-1); towers_of_hanoi(c,from,to,tmp,1); towers_of_hanoi(c,tmp,to,from,n-1); } } I really don't think it's acceptable to require users to use tricky and limited features like lazy range generators just to get efficient insertion into a container. Regards, Phil.