On Jan 24, 2011, at 12:13 AM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 11:51 AM, David Bergman <David.Bergman@bergmangupta.com> wrote:
On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:34 PM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
I think I disagree with this. A string is by definition a sequence of something -- a string of integers, a string of events, a string of characters. Encoding is not an intrinsic property of a string.
Ok... it feels like you are changing the rules as we play, instead of admitting "defeat" ;-)
Or, did you indeed talk about *generic sequences* this whole time? If so, why the focus on encoding strategies for characters?
Huh?
Why did you suddenly mention string as being an alias for what we usually denote a 'sequence' (of which std::vector is a model, by the way)?
I've always been pointing out that strings should just be immutable and agnostic of the encoding and have the encoding enforced externally to the string.
Are you confusing me for someone else?
No, not at all. There were two - for me - pretty awkward statements made by you, indicating a lack of coherence: 1. Your answer regarding what you meant by 'smarter iterator', which was a tautology adding no information at all: "The way I was thinking about it, "smarter" would mean something along the lines of "knows more than your average <thing>" where <thing> is a bare iterator." Yes, that touches at the definition of 'smarter'... but surely you understand that we (or he...) wondered *in what way* it was smarter; you *did* in fact extend a little bit on that later, I can give you that... 2. Your sudden proclamation that a string is a sequence of anything; indicating that you have been talking about a new sequence concept (variant) all this time, capable of holding stuff that are quite distinct from characters. Yes, ok, that is one meaning of 'string' in a strict sense, yes, but (I hope it was clear) that it is not the meaning used in this specific discussion; so, that switch of interpretation of the term does probably not make the discussion more focused.
My assertion has been from the beginning:
1. Let's focus on a string class first that is (arguably) better than std::string by making it efficient, immutable, and does proper value semantics.
2. Once we have this then let's build upon it to allow for multiple ways of interpreting the *contents* of the string.
I'm inclined to think you're confusing me for someone else while replying to my message above.
No, I did not. Sorry. By what you said above, you also add this point, which de-coheres the picture quite a bit: 3. This string class should be able to manifest sequences of anything, including events or arbitrary objects. /David