"Eric Niebler" <eric@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message news:4235E56D.2090109@boost-consulting.com... | Thorsten Ottosen wrote: | > "Eric Niebler" <eric@boost-consulting.com> wrote in message | | > | > | But thinking of this | > | as a range conversion is the right way to go, IMO, except that it should | > | be called "range_cast" and it should be explicit. | > | > hm..I dunno, the cast stuff implies some kind of extra work to me. | > | | Could you explain this a bit? well, I expect a "cast" to be more than a copy algorithm. | copy(from, to). That's the idiomatic way of writing a copy function. | What you have above is a conversion function, and typically we call | those things casts. Ok, I just read it a copy-like algorithm. | | > | > | All these problems are handled nicely by the std::copy algorithm, which | > | takes an output iterator as a parameter. A general, extensible | > | range-based algorithm library should take output /ranges/ as parameters, | > | or even just an output iterator, but this is all beside the point | > | > The iterator interface suffers | > from either being slow or being unsafe, so I don't think that is the way to go | > either. | | | You're saying that either an output iterator is range-checked and it's | slow, or it's not an it's unsafe. How is an output range any different? we know its size; we don't know how far an iterator is valid. take something as simple as copy( begin, end, std::back_inserter( a_vector ) ); this is safe, but super dum since we don't take advantage of the size of the range [begin, end) might be know for forward iterators. OTOH, If I pass copy() a naked iterator, it is fast, but not range checked. | It's a sincere question -- I really don't know if output ranges have | anything to offer above output iterators. There is no official Output Range concept, but you can have a Writeable Range to be overwritten. | > | > |. A | > | range-based copy algorithm should have a different interface and be part | > | of a complete range-based algorithms library. | > | > yes, agreed. | > | > We just need somebody to write those special range algorithms. | > | | Have you missed it? I've got one in the sandbox, but it needs attention. no, no, I know you have started from where I left off. And that is goooood :-) But I thought you meant more range algorithms; for example, std::copy is what I would call an iterator algorithm; an range algorithm would demand the output parameter to be be a writable forward range. A range find algorithm would look for a subsequence within a bigger sequence. (Like in the string algorithms) -Thorsten