[libstdc++] Doxygen markup for algorithms

Jonathan Wakely cow@compsoc.man.ac.uk
Mon Feb 18 13:14:00 GMT 2002


On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 12:31:07PM -0800, Kenny Simpson wrote:
> FWIW I find Austern's book the best reference for this
> stuff, it even documents the sgi extensions.

I've borrowed a copy of this now, it does seem pretty good.

What are people's thoughts about the use of "sequence" in phrases such as
"Apply a function to every element of a sequence" ?
I ask because although the standard uses it in this way, as does Plauger,
"Sequence" is defined (23.1.1) as a particular type of Container.
Is it confusing to use sequence to describe a specific concept in the STL
as well as to describe the range of iterators over which an algorithm
works, which doesn't necessarily meet the requirements of a Sequence?
Should I avoid using sequence in this way? Readers of the standard might
be expected to grok the difference between a Sequence and a sequence of
values, but should the libstdc++ docs be more forgiving?
It's trivial to say "Apply a function to every element in a range"
instead. Austern has taken this option, stating out that when he uses
the word he is referring to the specific concept, and SGI's docs don't use
it ambiguously either (although it's not so easy to describe the search
and search_n algorithms without "subsequence" :-)

Thanks,
jon

-- 
"Entropy requires no maintenance"



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