Bug in STL list<> template?

[Matt Austern]

The wording is confusing, yes.  (Empirically true, since several
people have been confused by it.)  Nevertheless, it's the
prescribed ISO wording for saying that something is recommended
but not required.

We were quite careful about this.  This was part of the Great Kona
Compromise (those who were there will know what I'm talking about,
and those who weren't there don't want to know), and we checked
the official rules before putting in those words.

			--Matt



On Dec 9,  4:59pm, Mike Stump wrote:
> Subject: Re: Bug in STL list<> template?
> > Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:58:54 +0100 (MET)
> > From: Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
>
> > I believe that some time ago there was a discussion of this issue
> > and someone from SGI (Matt?) replied that ``should'' is not
> > mandatory and that for some reasons they decided to save the memory
> > that counter costed.
>
> If the Standard says something like ``Those entries marked ``(Note
> A)'' should | have constant complexity'' in it, that is a bug.  That
> wording should not have been used, as it is confusing.  The standard
> should either have a meaningful complexity, or none, everything else
> is just wishy washy (American slang, implies the person couldn't make
> up their mind).
>
> :-(
>-- End of excerpt from Mike Stump