Hi all.
Here at work, we have a class that stores non-POD objects by raw pointer, and has a get method that returns that raw pointer if the key was found (the storage is an std::map<key, value*> and the get method has a signature value* getThing(const key&); ). The objects are created elsewhere and simply stored in this class for ownership. A note to keep in mind is that c++ exceptions are disabled, and we're not using c++11 yet.
My issue with this is that everywhere the getThing method is called, we need to check for null, since if the value is not found, null is returned.
This annoys me to hell, since it bloats the code everywhere with null checks. I have a few ideas about changing it.
1. Add a 'bool exists(const key&)' method which does the obvious, and change the getThing to return a reference.
- The issue here is if someone calls getThing without checking if the value exists, then i don't know what to return? The .second value of the end iterator? It should cause a crash as soon as someone uses the reference, right?
- Since exceptions are disabled, i can't throw in case nothing was found, so i'm forced to always return something, and end.second seems like the only choice.
- Another problem with this is that the getThing method is const too, so i'm not sure if returning a plain reference will work (i remember it being a compilation error [in some cases]) or if the reference also has to be const, which makes it impossible to change the thing we get. A solution is to remove the const, but isn't nice.
2. Have the getThing method return a bool, and accept a double pointer or reference-to-pointer as an 'out' argument, so if the value is found, true is returned and the out argument is set to point to the found value.
- This seems ok and removes the need for a null check at the call site, but is again using pointers instead of references. I don't have anything against pointers, mind you, but i believe having references in the public interface of a class makes the code look cleaner since it's similar to the rest of it (using references everywhere instead of a mix of pointers and references, i find pointers fine for internals of specific classes).
I'd like to get others opinion on this, another perspective on how this could be done better and/or different. For all i know, maybe the current implementation is fine, and i just need to come to terms with it... Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks!