Re: Type Functors

From:
desktop <fff@sss.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 09:24:23 +0200
Message-ID:
<f4dkj5$anl$1@news.net.uni-c.dk>
Erik Wikstr?m wrote:

On 2007-06-08 23:40, desktop wrote:

V.R. Marinov wrote:

On Jun 8, 8:10 pm, desktop <f...@sss.com> wrote:

The problem seems to occur when I do an insert:

test t1;
my_set.insert(t1);

as long as I don't insert I can make a set with or without specifying
std::less<test> and without implementing the '<' in test.

When doing an insert I must implement the '<' operator in test and it
makes no difference if I specify std::less<test> or not.


OK. So std::set<> sorts the elements when they are inserted. In order
to sort them it needs
a criteria. The default criteria used by std::sort is the template
function (or functor/function object) called std::less<>. Here is how
std::less<> might look like:

 template <class _Tp>
    struct less : public binary_function<_Tp, _Tp, bool>
    {
      bool
      operator()(const _Tp& __x, const _Tp& __y) const
      { return __x < __y; }
    };

So as you can see the std::less<test> uses the < operator.
So *you* need to provide < operator in way possible for std::less to
use it.

But I am not sure what to put in the body of '<'. Currently I have:

     bool operator <(test const& t) const {
                return (*this).getpp() < t.getpp();
     }

but that was just to fill in the body.


The thing is that if you decide to std::greater<test> instead of
std::less<test>
you would have to provide a > operator.
Plus you might need to provide some more operators,
so I would suggest you create a separate header
file (e.g. test_op.h) and provide all operators needed.
This is how the < operator might look like
if you decide your class not have friend operators ;)

bool operator<(const test& lhs, const test& rhs)
    {
    return lhs.get() < rhs.get();
    }


I get an error that the operator must take exactly one argument. But I
still don't understand how each of my test objects get a unique key
that the std::less function can use to insert the object the correct
place.


There is no unique key, the tree does not need any key. All the tree/
algorithm is concerned with is nodes and in connecting them in a
specific order, this order is determined by comparing the value of each
node with the value of all the other nodes. and This is where the <
operator comes in, it compares a value with another and tells the tree
if it is greater or less than the other, and from that information a
decision is made of where to place the node.


I have implemented insert as described in Cormen section 13:

my_red_black_tree::insert(value_type const& e) {

....
....

if (e == value[x]) {
    return std::make_pair(x, false);
}

if (e < value[x]) {
    x = left[x];
}
    else {
        x = right[x];
    }
....
....
}

Which does a lot of comparisons based on the key 'e' (have only shown a
fragment of the code). Since set does only support unique keys it
returns if 'e' is already in the tree.

It all works fine if I only use integers. But if I try to insert my
'test' objects I somehow need to extract an int key and use that as 'e'
to do the comparison.

I know this is not correct and that insert should somehow use std::less
instead and each time a '<' appears in the code call this operator in
the 'test' object. But I have some difficulty seeing how it actually works.

Another thing besides from '<' it also seems that '==' should be defined.

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