id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,milestone,component,version,severity,resolution,keywords,cc
2857,change return type of the c_array() member function,hervemart1@…,Marshall Clow,"Currently the return type of c_array() member function is T* for boost::array<T,N>. Regarding its name we could expect from this function to return a reference on a C array rather than a pointer on the first element of the array.

In returning T* type a piece of information about the C array is lost since the static size N is not transmitted.

I suggest to change the existing c_array() member function:
{{{
T* c_array() { return elems; }

}}}

into,
{{{
T (&c_array())[N] { return elems; }
}}}


The both implementation are pretty similar since a reference on array is implicitly convertible into a pointer on the 1st element of this array.

These following kind of lines of code would still work:
{{{
array<int,10> toto;
int* item_ptr = toto.c_array();

}}}

but purist would now be able to write
{{{
int (&toto_ref)[10] = toto.c_array();

}}}

The improvement which would be brought by the change is that in our example sizeof( toto.c_array() ) would return value 10*sizeof(int), the real size of the C array.

best regards, herve",Patches,closed,To Be Determined,array,Boost 1.38.0,Cosmetic,fixed,,niels_address_until_2010-10-10@…