Victor Bazarov
11/6/2008 1:32:00 PM
Guy.Tristram@gmail.com wrote:
> Is there any good reason operator< is not defined for std::bitset?
I would venture a guess that a bitset was created as a collection of
*independent* bits none of which is more important than the other, and
therefore the type does not have the semantics of comparison with 'less
than' operators, only for equality.
> It
> seems to me that:
>
> 1 - it would be useful.
That's exactly on what the creators of the library do not agree with
you, I am guessing. You seem to attach some extra meaning to those
bits, the meaning the creators did not want to give the elements of the
collection.
> 2 - it is easy to implement inside the class template.
> 3 - it is impossible to implement efficiently (for bitsets too large
> for to_ulong) outside of the class.
>
> For now I will use boost::dynamic_bitset, which does implement it.
That's what the third-party libraries are for, extending the standard
library, providing elements that do not exist in it.
V
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