id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
3224	shape() should return a RandomAccessCollection	fhess	Ronald Garcia	"Has there ever been any thought to making multi_array::shape() return something that models the Collection concept (RandomAccessCollection in particular I suppose) rather than a raw pointer?  This would allow the return value from shape() to be passed directly to multi_array::reshape() or multi_array::resize(), for added convenience.  It would also allow a debug assertion to be added to make sure you don't try to access beyond the end of the array returned by shape().

From looking at the multi_array code, it looks like it would be relatively easy to add a new function called maybe ""size()"" which would replace ""shape()"" (which could be kept but deprecated) where
size() would return a const reference to the boost::array used internally to store the extent_list_.
"	Feature Requests	new	Boost 1.40.0	multi_array	Boost 1.39.0	Problem