Pavol Droba writes:
You are not quite right. Sequence concept is precisely defined in C++ standard.
Yes, and that's unfortunate, because it is essentially a dead concept -- "nobody" writes generic code that relies on it -- that has occupied a good name. In fact, "Collection" is exactly the word that would perfectly fit to describe what the standard choose to refer to as "Sequence". I don't think going the other way around would be a good call. In CS terminology, collections are inherently associated with storage; using the term to name the concept that explicitly aims at representing sequences that do not necessarily have any is IMO a bad idea.
Collection traits are not implementig this concept, they don't even implement full Container concept. So if would be very misleading to use the name of it. Collection traits are working with structures that model Collection concept, therfore they should be named after it IMHO.
"Collection" is an unfortunate name for the concept. Not having "Sequence" at our disposal, it should be called "Iterator Range" or something along these lines.
Well I cannot judge the standard naming, however I think, that some standardization is better then none. So if there is a definition we should change the standard of stick to it. Later is probably more feasible.
I wasn't suggesting to re-define the standard's Sequence concept to mean what we want (although that's not entirely impossible). Rather, I was saying that "Collection" is a bad substitute for the occupied term.
I found collection easy to understand. I don't understand what is wrong with it.
There is nothing wrong with the word per se. It just has a commonly accepted meaning that is in conflict with the definition we are giving to the identically named concept. In particular, like I said earlier, "Collection" commonly implies storage, while the concept in question specifically aims to represent sequences that don't have any. Compare, for instance, http://tinyurl.com/32fmb and http://tinyurl.com/3h23s.
It very well fits into the standard concept hierarchy
Collection < Container < Sequence < Associative container
Looks like a total mess to me. If anything, it should be Sequence < Collection < Container < Associative Container < View
Unlike container, that have an ownership of its elements, collection might be just a reference to values. So it describes a "collection" of values organized in an arbitrary structure.
That's not a correct definition of the concept we are trying to name, though. The "structure" might not even exists -- think 'range_view(0, 100)', for instance. Which only exemplifies my point; the word has wrong connotations.
Collection concept specifies an interface to access these values.
I understand what the definition of the concept is. I am saying that its _name_ is unfit and misleading. -- Aleksey Gurtovoy MetaCommunications Engineering