Re: std::string bad design????
Seungbeom Kim <musiphil@bawi.org> wrote:
Daniel T. wrote:
The position of the *internal* marker must be unequivocally known
prior to calling RHE(), this means that either all calls to RHE
must be immediately preceded by a call to locate() or the
programmer writing the client code must somehow know that the
*internal* marker is in the right position.
If you are expecting your clients to do the former, then you
should provide a single method that does both steps for them. If
you are expecting them to do the latter, then you obviously have
poor encapsulation. You are requiring clients of the class to keep
track of the object's internal state.
Agreed. My point is that such a relationship is far better expressed by
an external iterator that is separate from the container, exists only
locally from the point of lookup until the point you're done with it.
Iterators have their own problems. Their scope must be kept small
because they are almost useless as independent entities. Given an
iterator, you can't know if it is dereferencable without knowing its
entire history.
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