Dave Abrahams wrote:
on Thu Oct 06 2011, "Phil Endecott" <spam_from_boost_dev-AT-chezphil.org> wrote:
Dave Abrahams wrote:
I'd like to see somebody write the description of the algorithm, including the concept requirements.
Well we can start by copying what the experts wrote for std::find, can't we?
Who are "the experts?" The specification that we have in the standard library is not current best practice when it comes to Generic Programming. I'm not sure who crafted the language, but it's not what we should do today.
Well perhaps we need to step back and decide what we're trying to do here. Are we trying to create stuff that is so "best practice" that it's even better than the not-yet-ratified new version of the language? Are we making that requirement an absolute one that trumps useful functionality? If so, why? It seems unnecessarily puritan to me.
For the non-predicate version it just says "Returns: The first iterator i in the range [first,last) for which *i==value holds" (n3242).
Exactly, a pile of syntax.
Back in the "clamp" discussion, I tried to argue that for trivial operations I would actually prefer to have a "pile of syntax" rather than a free-standing spec. My argument was that for trivial things we actually have the implementation in our minds first and then find ourselves trying to think of some other way of expressing the same thing in order to write down a spec; in the process, we're as likely to make a mistake in the spec as we are to make a mistake in the implementation. Examples: clamp(val,lo,hi) = val<lo ? lo : val>hi : hi : val; vs. clamp(val,lo,hi) returns the middle value when (val,lo,hi) are ordered according to operator< Regards, Phil.