On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:54:27 -0500 David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote:
I wish people would stop calling it that. It's easy, but it's overkill.
I got the term from "Exceptional C++" where Herb Sutter calls it "the operator()= canonical form." I am certainly open to alternatives (especially since I didn't invent the term ;-).
I know it is has a little more overhead
Yes.
Sure. The same could be said of shared_ptr and many other useful, well-established, tools and techniques that help the programmer write more correct code. IMO, this "operator=() canonical form" is by far the best initial solution for any non-trivial class. Make sure your copy-ctor and swap do the right thing (which you have to do anyway), and you are set. It is simple, elegant, and in most cases has fairly small overhead. It also helps emphasize correctness first. If the performance becomes a noticable problem, then attack it, but by then you will already have several tests for correctness and performance, which means that any problems in the changed implementation will be detected quickly. As always, a comment about the performance needs of the code is nice, as it prevents others from changing the performance characteristics later.