On 1/21/2011 7:45 PM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 8:37 PM, Eric Niebler <eric@boostpro.com> wrote:
On 1/21/2011 7:07 PM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
Mostly I'm interested in seeing a string class that is:
1. Immutable. No if's or but's about it. I don't want a string to be modifiable. Period. You can create it, and once it's created, that's it.
2. Has real value semantics. This means, once you've copied it, that's really copied. No funky copy-on-write reference-counting mumbo-jumbo.
Uh, if the string is immutable, then two strings can transparently share the same data. There is no "write" in "copy-on-write". That's the definition of immutable. :-)
Ha! You're right. :D Now if you can make this work without reference counting, that'd be perfect. :D
Why? Immutable data is exactly the situation (and the only situation IMO) when you'd want to share data. The potential savings, both in time and space, are huge. What's wrong with a ref-counted string impl? -- Eric Niebler BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com