Container insertion and removal

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:42:10 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu 
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Iterator invalidation has been a notion thoroughly explored by the STL 
>> and a commonly-mentioned liability of STL iterators. People find it 
>> very jarring that syntactically identical interfaces have distinct 
>> effects on iterators, it's a dependency very difficult to track. I'm 
>> glad that that experience has already been accumulated and that we can 
>> build upon it.
> 
> Is there any experience that led to a solution, even in theory?

I don't know of one. There are of course the safe iterators that rely on 
a variety of techniques (some, such as serial numbers, discussed in this 
thread) to detect invalidation dynamically.

For the style of containers discussed herein, a static solution should 
be a better fit than a dynamic one. I plan to enact a solution by means 
of the softXxx primitives.

> I'm going to stop arguing this point any further, because the quickest 
> path to resolution is probably for you to stop wasting time debating 
> with me and implement what you think will work.  Then we can see how 
> useful it might be.
> 
> If you can solve this problem in a way that is useful, I think it might 
> be as revolutionary as ranges are.

Probably not. The way I see it, it would be simply the removal of a 
large annoyance that stands in the way of writing container-independent 
generic code.


Andrei