Re: rel_ops (was Re: GCC 3.1 Release)

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at codesourcery dot com>]

Joe Buck <Joe.Buck@synopsys.com> writes:

| Gaby:
| > | > I'll apply the same thing to mainline.  Branch requires your approval
| > | > if I understand correctly.
| 
| Mark:
| > | Do it.  And thank you.  And please close the high-priority PR. :-)
| 
| Gaby:
| > Done.  Thanks.
| 
| I see that Gaby couldn't resist throwing in an editorial comment attacking
| std::rel_ops.

Joe, I didn't "attack" std::rel_ops.  I simply stated a *fact*: the
operators in std::rel_ops are greedy and tend to take precedence over
operators that would have been selected, were stg::rel_ops absent.

| After the attack, Gaby asks "Can someone remind me what
| generic programming is about?"
| 
| I will remind him that the ability to define just operator== and operator<
| and automatically get correct definitions of the other four, every time,
| (at least for a large number of cases) is a powerful instance of of
| generic programming, and this is exactly what generic programming is
| about.

I appreciate your answer, but it doesn't answer my concern and as such
doesn't enlighten the point std::rel_ops is serving generic programming
here: It causes more trouble than it solves.

[...]

| I'm not going to ask that the comment be stricken, but I'm not crazy
| about the idea of a lot of editorial commentary in the headers.

I think you're taking this issue more personally than it should.
Qualifying my comments as being attacking std::rel_ops is far too
extreme.  

Am I mistaken to think that the std::rel_ops issue is more about
Joe/Gaby than about anything else?

-- Gaby