Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Kay-Uwe Kasemir <[email protected]> · Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:44:54 -0400

On Jul 27, 2005, at 20:19, Jeff Hill wrote:

My reservation about this is # 29 in Effective C++ 2nd edition - avoid
returning handles to internal data.

Sure, let's make Eff.C++ (2nd edition) our bible,
which opens it up to many interdicting interpretations ;-)

To me, hiding internal data of a string class includes:
Hide how your string class gets memory.
Hide a possible interlinked list of all strings.
Hide an internal "int reference_count".

But the "const char *" to the string is
_the_data_ of a string in its only shareable format.
I don't see #29 as
"Thou shall not write a string class that provides an actual string".

-Kay

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System