Memory Corruption with AAs

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-04-03 23:21:48 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu 
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> said:

> On 04/02/2010 03:53 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> dsimcha wrote:
>>> I almost never do this with any data structure other
>>> than an array because, even if it works for now, I consider it a horrible
>>> violation of encapsulation because you're relying on the details of
>>> how the data
>>> structure manipulates memory. This is also why, when I designed RandAA
>>> I didn't
>>> see this as an issue until you pointed it out to me.
>> 
>> Andrei is working on the design of the D collection class library. After
>> much thought and research, he finally came to the conclusion that a
>> collection class should not allow the address of a member to be taken. I
>> think his reasoning on the issue is pretty sound, and is consistent with
>> your take on it.
> 
> I wouldn't call it research, but I agonized a fair amount over it. I 
> think Phobos containers will all use malloc, realloc, and free for 
> their own storage, while still being safe.

I think this is a sound decision. And I'm not necessarily talking about 
using malloc, realloc, and free (even though a container capable of 
using realloc is certainly a plus), but the one about decoupling the 
container interface from any particular memory management 
implementation.

Question: if the container's memory isn't garbage-collected, how do you 
implement iterators, eh, ranges so that they are still memory-safe?

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/