On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:12:58 -0700, "Jonathan Turkanis" <technews@kangaroologic.com> wrote:
Well, I can't really argue with that.
Maybe that's up to me :) There are really cases where you want the compiler to count the elements for you (initialization with the [] = {...} syntax) and retrieve that number *later*. Incredibly, the first C++ file I opened this morning showed me this unfairly neglected situation. And it was my code... Please don't comment on that :) unsigned long numbers[] = { 0, 1, 40247 }; const std::size_t array_count = sizeof(numbers) / sizeof(numbers[0]); for (std::size_t i = 0; i < array_count; ++i) { ... } Note the loop over the array elements. The whole code is in a unit test and each number in the array initializer list corresponds to a test case of a function. So adding/removing numbers means adding/removing test cases. As the code is, I can remove any number from the list without having to modify anything else. Instead, if you write const std::size_t n = 3; unsigned long numbers[n] = { 0, 1, 40247 }; and then drop one of the numbers without also fixing the definition of n you change semantics (the additional element(s) are initialized to zero) usually with no compiler warning. Basically this is a situation where you have a list of objects and want to use them all, no matter how many they are; the fact that you have to count them is an implementation detail due to the lack of a for-each construct in the language. PS: Of course I'm not saying one has to use a template for this; I guess most people would consider the sizeof/sizeof technique safe enough (chances that you use a pointer instead of an array are quite low). But, anyway... :) Genny.