Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Thanks
/P
35  2825 
dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Thanks
/P
Because to have a valid reference you must somewhere else have an object
and you must therefore be aware of the lifetime of that object. This
leaves open the possibilities of dangling references and memory leaks.
STL containers own their objects and clean up after themselves when the
container is destructed, essentially solving both of these problems.
If you really want the equivalent of a stored reference, you can make a
container of pointers-- likely that's what a reference is "under the
hood" anyway.
Mark P kirjoitti:
If you really want the equivalent of a stored reference, you can make a
container of pointers-- likely that's what a reference is "under the
hood" anyway.
Or more precisely, a memory address. ;)
dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).
/Peter
peter koch wrote:
dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).
/Peter
and containers of built-in types (e.g. int and double) and value types
(e.g., complex and pair) are very common and important.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup; http://www.reasearch.att.com/~bs
"bjarne" <bj****@gmail.c omwrote in message
news:11******** **************@ i42g2000cwa.goo glegroups.com.. .
>
peter koch wrote:
>dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).
Peter:
Can you quantify/explain, "references do have quite a lot of overhead" a
bit?
Tony
On Dec 13, 2:31 am, "Tony" <rdnewsNOSPAM2. ..@sbcglobal.ne twrote:
"bjarne" <bja...@gmail.c omwrote in messagenews:11* *************** ******@i42g2000 cwa.googlegroup s.com...
peter koch wrote:
dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).Peter:
Can you quantify/explain, "references do have quite a lot of overhead" a
bit?
When using references/pointers you need to perform an additional
memory-access, first one when you get the pointer from the container
and a second one when following the pointer to the actual object. Take
for example a vector (in which the contained elements are stored
contiguously), what you need to keep in the processors cache when
working with it can be the iterator and the contained elements, if you
use pointers you need to keep the iterator, the contained elements
_and_ the actual data, which might be spread all over the place leading
to repeated cache-misses and severely affecting performance.
--
Erik Wikström
<er****@student .chalmers.sewro te in message
news:11******** **************@ f1g2000cwa.goog legroups.com...
On Dec 13, 2:31 am, "Tony" <rdnewsNOSPAM2. ..@sbcglobal.ne twrote:
"bjarne" <bja...@gmail.c omwrote in
messagenews:11* *************** ******@i42g2000 cwa.googlegroup s.com...
peter koch wrote:
dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).Peter:
Can you quantify/explain, "references do have quite a lot of overhead" a
bit?
"When using references/pointers you need to perform an additional
memory-access, first one when you get the pointer from the container
and a second one when following the pointer to the actual object. Take
for example a vector (in which the contained elements are stored
contiguously), what you need to keep in the processors cache when
working with it can be the iterator and the contained elements, if you
use pointers you need to keep the iterator, the contained elements
_and_ the actual data, which might be spread all over the place leading
to repeated cache-misses and severely affecting performance."
OK. I thought he (you?) meant that references had some kind of overhead
over that which pointers have (something behind the scenes). The above
is obvious. "references do have quite a lot of overhead" sounds like
something more than just the extra level of indirection.
Tony
On Dec 13, 12:12 pm, "Tony" <rdnewsNOSPAM2. ..@sbcglobal.ne twrote:
<eri...@student .chalmers.sewro te in messagenews:11* *************** ******@f1g2000c wa.googlegroups .com...
On Dec 13, 2:31 am, "Tony" <rdnewsNOSPAM2. ..@sbcglobal.ne twrote:
peter koch wrote:
>dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
>Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
>you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics.(I
>believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
>context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
>"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
>Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).Peter:
Can you quantify/explain, "references do have quite a lot of overhead"a
bit?"When using references/pointers you need to perform an additional
memory-access, first one when you get the pointer from the container
and a second one when following the pointer to the actual object. Take
for example a vector (in which the contained elements are stored
contiguously), what you need to keep in the processors cache when
working with it can be the iterator and the contained elements, if you
use pointers you need to keep the iterator, the contained elements
_and_ the actual data, which might be spread all over the place leading
to repeated cache-misses and severely affecting performance."
OK. I thought he (you?) meant that references had some kind of overhead
over that which pointers have (something behind the scenes). The above
is obvious. "references do have quite a lot of overhead" sounds like
something more than just the extra level of indirection.
Maybe, I don't know what he was thinking of, but as others have pointed
out reference semantics is not clearly defined in C++ since we have
both pointers and references and neither of them are the same thing as
in Java or C#. <speculationI n those languages the references are more
than just pointers since they are also used to manage garbage
collection, this might have some kind of impact on performance too.
</speculation>
Notice that in certain applications the overhead of the extra
indirection can be quite a large part of the total time needed to
perform an operation, say for example if you have a really large
std::vector<int *and you go through it sum up all the elements, since
the actual operation is quite fast the overhead could be quite
noticeable, if you on the other hand performed a complicated operation
on each element the impact can be relatively small compared to the
total running time.
--
Erik Wikström er****@student. chalmers.se wrote:
On Dec 13, 2:31 am, "Tony" <rdnewsNOSPAM2. ..@sbcglobal.ne twrote:
"bjarne" <bja...@gmail.c omwrote in messagenews:11* *************** ******@i42g2000 cwa.googlegroup s.com...
peter koch wrote:
>dragoncoder wrote:
Just a simple theoritical question to the experts.
What was the rationale behind making STL containers follow copy
semantics rather than reference semantics. References almost always
make things easier without much of overhead. Then why not reference ?
>Because C and C++ always has been value-based and always has allowed
>you to use pointers in case you really wanted "reference" semantics. (I
>believe the wording is from Java - thus it is misleading in a C++
>context). And references do have quite a lot of overhead: that is why
>"simple objects" such as integers are value-based in languages such as
>Java (needing "boxing" to work as real objects).Peter:
Can you quantify/explain, "references do have quite a lot of overhead" a
bit?
When using references/pointers you need to perform an additional
memory-access, first one when you get the pointer from the container
and a second one when following the pointer to the actual object. Take
for example a vector (in which the contained elements are stored
contiguously), what you need to keep in the processors cache when
working with it can be the iterator and the contained elements, if you
use pointers you need to keep the iterator, the contained elements
_and_ the actual data, which might be spread all over the place leading
to repeated cache-misses and severely affecting performance.
Yes. Great. Means we have container library able to store just values.
Translates in container library really efficient only for fundamental
and trivial concrete types.
Therefore you have to store anything non-copyable (or hard to copyable)
as pointer.
Means we are getting all troubles described above, plus the problem of
that container is no more able to manage object lifetime.
Regards,
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