Pick the pointer
2014-04-11
This is probably not the best way to go about things, from a readability perspective... But it just occurred to me today that there's yet another use for std::max. Consider:
fsal::Entity *se = ptrl
? static_cast<fsal::Entity*>(ptrl.ptr())
: static_cast<fsal::Entity*>(ptrc.ptr());
Since ptrl.ptr() and ptrc.ptr() are diffferent types,
I need to cast them both separately. This is a lot of typing and a lot
of reading. The shorter way? How about:
fsal::Entity *se = std::max<fsal::Entity*>(ptrl.ptr(), ptrc.ptr());
I will make the argument that this is elegant. It is short and concise
and does exactly what I need (it picks out the one pointer that is not 0).
As for readability, this is so far from "normal" that it is probably
not a good idea.