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git.saurik.com Git - wxWidgets.git/blob - interface/dynarray.h
1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
3 // Purpose: interface of wxArray<T>
4 // Author: wxWidgets team
6 // Licence: wxWindows license
7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
13 This section describes the so called @e dynamic arrays. This is a C
14 array-like type safe data structure i.e. the member access time is constant
16 linear according to the number of container elements as for linked lists).
18 arrays are dynamic in the sense that they will automatically allocate more
19 memory if there is not enough of it for adding a new element. They also perform
20 range checking on the index values but in debug mode only, so please be sure to
21 compile your application in debug mode to use it (see @ref
22 overview_debuggingoverview "debugging overview" for
23 details). So, unlike the arrays in some other
24 languages, attempt to access an element beyond the arrays bound doesn't
25 automatically expand the array but provokes an assertion failure instead in
26 debug build and does nothing (except possibly crashing your program) in the
29 The array classes were designed to be reasonably efficient, both in terms of
30 run-time speed and memory consumption and the executable size. The speed of
31 array item access is, of course, constant (independent of the number of
33 making them much more efficient than linked lists (wxList).
34 Adding items to the arrays is also implemented in more or less constant time -
35 but the price is preallocating the memory in advance. In the @ref
36 wxArray::memorymanagement "memory management" section
37 you may find some useful hints about optimizing wxArray memory usage. As for
39 wxArray functions are inline, so they do not take @e any space at all.
41 wxWidgets has three different kinds of array. All of them derive from
42 wxBaseArray class which works with untyped data and can not be used directly.
43 The standard macros WX_DEFINE_ARRAY(), WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY() and
44 WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY() are used to define a new class deriving from it. The
45 classes declared will be called in this documentation wxArray, wxSortedArray and
46 wxObjArray but you should keep in mind that no classes with such names actually
47 exist, each time you use one of WX_DEFINE_XXXARRAY macro you define a class
48 with a new name. In fact, these names are "template" names and each usage of one
49 of the macros mentioned above creates a template specialization for the given
52 wxArray is suitable for storing integer types and pointers which it does not
53 treat as objects in any way, i.e. the element pointed to by the pointer is not
54 deleted when the element is removed from the array. It should be noted that
55 all of wxArray's functions are inline, so it costs strictly nothing to define as
56 many array types as you want (either in terms of the executable size or the
57 speed) as long as at least one of them is defined and this is always the case
58 because wxArrays are used by wxWidgets internally. This class has one serious
59 limitation: it can only be used for storing integral types (bool, char, short,
60 int, long and their unsigned variants) or pointers (of any kind). An attempt
61 to use with objects of sizeof() greater than sizeof(long) will provoke a
62 runtime assertion failure, however declaring a wxArray of floats will not (on
63 the machines where sizeof(float) = sizeof(long)), yet it will @b not work,
64 please use wxObjArray for storing floats and doubles.
66 wxSortedArray is a wxArray variant which should be used when searching in the
67 array is a frequently used operation. It requires you to define an additional
68 function for comparing two elements of the array element type and always stores
69 its items in the sorted order (according to this function). Thus, it is
70 wxArray::Index function execution time is O(log(N)) instead of
71 O(N) for the usual arrays but the wxArray::Add method is
72 slower: it is O(log(N)) instead of constant time (neglecting time spent in
73 memory allocation routine). However, in a usual situation elements are added to
74 an array much less often than searched inside it, so wxSortedArray may lead to
75 huge performance improvements compared to wxArray. Finally, it should be
76 noticed that, as wxArray, wxSortedArray can be only used for storing integral
79 wxObjArray class treats its elements like "objects". It may delete them when
80 they are removed from the array (invoking the correct destructor) and copies
81 them using the objects copy constructor. In order to implement this behaviour
82 the definition of the wxObjArray arrays is split in two parts: first, you should
83 declare the new wxObjArray class using WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY() macro and then
84 you must include the file defining the implementation of template type:
85 wx/arrimpl.cpp and define the array class with WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY() macro
86 from a point where the full (as opposed to 'forward') declaration of the array
87 elements class is in scope. As it probably sounds very complicated here is an
91 #include wx/dynarray.h
93 // we must forward declare the array because it is used inside the class
98 // this defines two new types: ArrayOfDirectories and ArrayOfFiles which can be
99 // now used as shown below
100 WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY(MyDirectory, ArrayOfDirectories);
101 WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY(MyFile, ArrayOfFiles);
106 ArrayOfDirectories m_subdirectories; // all subdirectories
107 ArrayOfFiles m_files; // all files in this directory
112 // now that we have MyDirectory declaration in scope we may finish the
113 // definition of ArrayOfDirectories -- note that this expands into some C++
114 // code and so should only be compiled once (i.e., don't put this in the
115 // header, but into a source file or you will get linking errors)
116 #include wx/arrimpl.cpp // this is a magic incantation which must be done!
117 WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY(ArrayOfDirectories);
122 It is not as elegant as writing
125 typedef std::vectorMyDirectory ArrayOfDirectories;
128 but is not that complicated and allows the code to be compiled with any, however
129 dumb, C++ compiler in the world.
131 Remember to include wx/arrimpl.cpp just before each WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY
132 ocurrence in your code, even if you have several in the same file.
134 Things are much simpler for wxArray and wxSortedArray however: it is enough
138 WX_DEFINE_ARRAY_INT(int, ArrayOfInts);
139 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY_INT(int, ArrayOfSortedInts);
142 i.e. there is only one @c DEFINE macro and no need for separate
143 @c DECLARE one. For the arrays of the primitive types, the macros
144 @c WX_DEFINE_ARRAY_CHAR/SHORT/INT/SIZE_T/LONG/DOUBLE should be used
145 depending on the sizeof of the values (notice that storing values of smaller
146 type, e.g. shorts, in an array of larger one, e.g. @c ARRAY_INT, does
147 not work on all architectures!).
152 @see @ref overview_wxcontaineroverview, wxListT(), wxVectorT()
159 Appends the given number of @a copies of the @a item to the array
160 consisting of the elements of type @e T.
161 The first version is used with wxArray. The second is used with wxSortedArray,
162 returning the index where @a item is stored. The third and the
163 fourth ones are used with wxObjArray. There is an important difference between
164 them: if you give a pointer to the array, it will take ownership of it, i.e.
165 will delete it when the item is deleted from the array. If you give a reference
166 to the array, however, the array will make a copy of the item and will not take
167 ownership of the original item. Once again, it only makes sense for wxObjArrays
168 because the other array types never take ownership of their elements. Also note
169 that you cannot append more than one pointer as reusing it would lead to
170 deleting it twice (or more) and hence to a crash.
171 You may also use WX_APPEND_ARRAY() macro to append all
172 elements of one array to another one but it is more efficient to use
173 @a copies parameter and modify the elements in place later if you plan to
174 append a lot of items.
176 void Add(T item
, size_t copies
= 1);
179 void Add(T
& item
, size_t copies
= 1);
183 Inserts the given @a item into the array in the specified @e index
185 Be aware that you will set out the order of the array if you give a wrong
187 This function is useful in conjunction with
188 wxArray::IndexForInsert for a common operation
189 of "insert only if not found".
191 void AddAt(T item
, size_t index
);
209 Preallocates memory for a given number of array elements. It is worth calling
210 when the number of items which are going to be added to the array is known in
211 advance because it will save unneeded memory reallocation. If the array already
212 has enough memory for the given number of items, nothing happens. In any case,
213 the existing contents of the array is not modified.
215 void Alloc(size_t count
);
218 This function does the same as wxArray::Empty and additionally
219 frees the memory allocated to the array.
224 Array classes are 100% C++ objects and as such they have the appropriate copy
225 constructors and assignment operators. Copying wxArray just copies the elements
226 but copying wxObjArray copies the arrays items. However, for memory-efficiency
227 sake, neither of these classes has virtual destructor. It is not very important
228 for wxArray which has trivial destructor anyhow, but it does mean that you
229 should avoid deleting wxObjArray through a wxBaseArray pointer (as you would
230 never use wxBaseArray anyhow it shouldn't be a problem) and that you should not
231 derive your own classes from the array classes.
232 @ref wxArray::ctordef "wxArray default constructor"
234 @ref wxArray::ctorcopy "wxArray copy constructors and assignment operators"
236 @ref wxArray::dtor ~wxArray
242 (T first, T second)@e compareFunction)
243 There is no default constructor for wxSortedArray classes - you must initialize
245 with a function to use for item comparison. It is a function which is passed
246 two arguments of type @e T where @e T is the array element type and which
247 should return a negative, zero or positive value according to whether the first
248 element passed to it is less than, equal to or greater than the second one.
256 Removes the element from the array, but, unlike,
257 wxArray::Remove doesn't delete it. The function returns the
258 pointer to the removed element.
260 T
* Detach(size_t index
);
263 Empties the array. For wxObjArray classes, this destroys all of the array
264 elements. For wxArray and wxSortedArray this does nothing except marking the
265 array of being empty - this function does not free the allocated memory, use
266 wxArray::Clear for this.
271 Return the number of items in the array.
273 size_t GetCount() const;
277 The first version of the function is for wxArray and wxObjArray, the second is
278 for wxSortedArray only.
279 Searches the element in the array, starting from either beginning or the end
280 depending on the value of @a searchFromEnd parameter. @c wxNOT_FOUND is
281 returned if the element is not found, otherwise the index of the element is
283 Linear search is used for the wxArray and wxObjArray classes but binary search
284 in the sorted array is used for wxSortedArray (this is why searchFromEnd
285 parameter doesn't make sense for it).
286 @b NB: even for wxObjArray classes, the operator==() of the elements in the
287 array is @b not used by this function. It searches exactly the given
288 element in the array and so will only succeed if this element had been
289 previously added to the array, but fail even if another, identical, element is
292 int Index(T
& item
, bool searchFromEnd
= false) const;
293 const int Index(T
& item
) const;
297 Search for a place to insert @a item into the sorted array (binary search).
298 The index returned is just before the first existing item that is greater or
300 (according to the compare function) to the given @e item.
301 You have to do extra work to know if the @a item already exists in array.
302 This function is useful in conjunction with
303 wxArray::AddAt for a common operation
304 of "insert only if not found".
306 size_t IndexForInsert(T item
) const;
310 Insert the given number of @a copies of the @a item into the array before
311 the existing item @a n - thus, @e Insert(something, 0u) will insert an
312 item in such way that it will become the first array element.
313 wxSortedArray doesn't have this function because inserting in wrong place
314 would break its sorted condition.
315 Please see wxArray::Add for explanation of the differences
316 between the overloaded versions of this function.
318 void Insert(T item
, size_t n
, size_t copies
= 1);
319 void Insert(T
* item
, size_t n
);
320 void Insert(T
& item
, size_t n
, size_t copies
= 1);
324 Returns @true if the array is empty, @false otherwise.
326 bool IsEmpty() const;
329 Returns the item at the given position in the array. If @a index is out of
330 bounds, an assert failure is raised in the debug builds but nothing special is
331 done in the release build.
332 The returned value is of type "reference to the array element type" for all of
335 T
Item(size_t index
) const;
338 Returns the last element in the array, i.e. is the same as Item(GetCount() - 1).
339 An assert failure is raised in the debug mode if the array is empty.
340 The returned value is of type "reference to the array element type" for all of
346 To use an array you must first define the array class. This is done with the
347 help of the macros in this section. The class of array elements must be (at
348 least) forward declared for WX_DEFINE_ARRAY, WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY and
349 WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY macros and must be fully declared before you use
350 WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY macro.
353 WX_DEFINE_EXPORTED_ARRAY()
355 WX_DEFINE_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY()
357 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY()
359 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_EXPORTED_ARRAY()
361 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY()
363 WX_DECLARE_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY()
365 WX_DECLARE_USER_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY()
369 WX_DEFINE_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY()
371 WX_DEFINE_USER_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY()
372 To slightly complicate the matters even further, the operator - defined by
373 default for the array iterators by these macros only makes sense if the array
374 element type is not a pointer itself and, although it still works, this
375 provokes warnings from some compilers and to avoid them you should use the
376 @c _PTR versions of the macros above. For example, to define an array of
377 pointers to @c double you should use:
379 Note that the above macros are generally only useful for
380 wxObject types. There are separate macros for declaring an array of a simple
383 The following simple types are supported:
392 To create an array of a simple type, simply append the type you want in CAPS to
393 the array definition.
394 For example, for an integer array, you'd use one of the following variants:
395 WX_DEFINE_ARRAY_INT()
397 WX_DEFINE_EXPORTED_ARRAY_INT()
399 WX_DEFINE_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY_INT()
401 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY_INT()
403 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_EXPORTED_ARRAY_INT()
405 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY_INT()
410 Automatic array memory management is quite trivial: the array starts by
411 preallocating some minimal amount of memory (defined by
412 WX_ARRAY_DEFAULT_INITIAL_SIZE) and when further new items exhaust already
413 allocated memory it reallocates it adding 50% of the currently allocated
414 amount, but no more than some maximal number which is defined by
415 ARRAY_MAXSIZE_INCREMENT constant. Of course, this may lead to some memory
416 being wasted (ARRAY_MAXSIZE_INCREMENT in the worst case, i.e. 4Kb in the
417 current implementation), so the wxArray::Shrink function is
418 provided to deallocate the extra memory. The wxArray::Alloc
419 function can also be quite useful if you know in advance how many items you are
420 going to put in the array and will prevent the array code from reallocating the
421 memory more times than needed.
429 Functions in this section return the total number of array elements and allow to
430 retrieve them - possibly using just the C array indexing [] operator which
431 does exactly the same as wxArray::Item method.
443 Removes an element from the array by value: the first item of the
444 array equal to @a item is removed, an assert failure will result from an
445 attempt to remove an item which doesn't exist in the array.
446 When an element is removed from wxObjArray it is deleted by the array - use
447 Detach() if you don't want this to happen. On the
448 other hand, when an object is removed from a wxArray nothing happens - you
449 should delete it manually if required:
451 See also WX_CLEAR_ARRAY() macro which deletes all
452 elements of a wxArray (supposed to contain pointers).
457 Removes @a count elements starting at @a index from the array. When an
458 element is removed from wxObjArray it is deleted by the array - use
459 Detach() if you don't want this to happen. On
460 the other hand, when an object is removed from a wxArray nothing happens -
461 you should delete it manually if required:
463 See also WX_CLEAR_ARRAY() macro which deletes all
464 elements of a wxArray (supposed to contain pointers).
466 RemoveAt(size_t index
, size_t count
= 1);
484 wxArray::IndexForInsert
492 This function ensures that the number of array elements is at least
493 @e count. If the array has already @a count or more items, nothing is
494 done. Otherwise, @c count - GetCount() elements are added and initialized to
497 @see wxArray::GetCount
499 void SetCount(size_t count
);
502 Frees all memory unused by the array. If the program knows that no new items
503 will be added to the array it may call Shrink() to reduce its memory usage.
504 However, if a new item is added to the array, some extra memory will be
510 The notation CMPFUNCT should be read as if we had the following declaration:
512 where @e T is the type of the array elements. I.e. it is a function returning
513 @e int which is passed two arguments of type @e T *.
514 Sorts the array using the specified compare function: this function should
515 return a negative, zero or positive value according to whether the first element
516 passed to it is less than, equal to or greater than the second one.
517 wxSortedArray doesn't have this function because it is always sorted.
519 void Sort(CMPFUNC
<T
> compareFunction
);
522 This macro may be used to append all elements of the @a other array to the
523 @e array. The two arrays must be of the same type.
525 #define void WX_APPEND_ARRAY(wxArray& array, wxArray& other) /* implementation is private */
528 This macro may be used to delete all elements of the array before emptying it.
529 It can not be used with wxObjArrays - but they will delete their elements anyhow
530 when you call Empty().
532 #define void WX_CLEAR_ARRAY(wxArray& array) /* implementation is private */
536 This macro declares a new object array class named @a name and containing
537 the elements of type @e T. The second form is used when compiling wxWidgets as
538 a DLL under Windows and array needs to be visible outside the DLL. The third is
539 needed for exporting an array from a user DLL.
542 You must use WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY() macro to define
543 the array class - otherwise you would get link errors.
545 WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY(T
, name
);
546 WX_DECLARE_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY(T
, name
);
547 WX_DECLARE_USER_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY(T
, name
);
552 This macro defines a new array class named @a name and containing the
553 elements of type @e T. The second form is used when compiling wxWidgets as
554 a DLL under Windows and array needs to be visible outside the DLL. The third is
555 needed for exporting an array from a user DLL.
558 Note that wxWidgets predefines the following standard array classes: @b
560 @b wxArrayLong, @b wxArrayShort, @b wxArrayDouble, @b wxArrayPtrVoid.
562 WX_DEFINE_ARRAY(T
, name
);
563 WX_DEFINE_EXPORTED_ARRAY(T
, name
);
564 WX_DEFINE_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY(T
, name
, exportspec
);
569 This macro defines the methods of the array class @a name not defined by the
570 WX_DECLARE_OBJARRAY() macro. You must include the
571 file wx/arrimpl.cpp before using this macro and you must have the full
572 declaration of the class of array elements in scope! If you forget to do the
573 first, the error will be caught by the compiler, but, unfortunately, many
574 compilers will not give any warnings if you forget to do the second - but the
575 objects of the class will not be copied correctly and their real destructor will
576 not be called. The latter two forms are merely aliases of the first to satisfy
577 some people's sense of symmetry when using the exported declarations.
580 WX_DEFINE_OBJARRAY(name
);
581 WX_DEFINE_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY(name
);
582 WX_DEFINE_USER_EXPORTED_OBJARRAY(name
);
587 This macro defines a new sorted array class named @a name and containing
588 the elements of type @e T. The second form is used when compiling wxWidgets as
589 a DLL under Windows and array needs to be visible outside the DLL. The third is
590 needed for exporting an array from a user DLL.
593 You will have to initialize the objects of this class by passing a comparison
594 function to the array object constructor like this:
596 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_ARRAY(T
, name
);
597 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_EXPORTED_ARRAY(T
, name
);
598 WX_DEFINE_SORTED_USER_EXPORTED_ARRAY(T
, name
);
602 This macro may be used to prepend all elements of the @a other array to the
603 @e array. The two arrays must be of the same type.
605 #define void WX_PREPEND_ARRAY(wxArray& array, wxArray& other) /* implementation is private */
609 The copy constructors and assignment operators perform a shallow array copy
610 (i.e. they don't copy the objects pointed to even if the source array contains
611 the items of pointer type) for wxArray and wxSortedArray and a deep copy (i.e.
612 the array element are copied too) for wxObjArray.
614 wxArray(const wxArray
& array
);
615 wxSortedArray(const wxSortedArray
& array
);
616 wxObjArray(const wxObjArray
& array
);
617 wxArray
operator=(const wxArray
& array
);
618 wxSortedArray
operator=(const wxSortedArray
& array
);
619 wxObjArray
operator=(const wxObjArray
& array
);
624 The wxObjArray destructor deletes all the items owned by the array. This is not
625 done by wxArray and wxSortedArray versions - you may use
626 WX_CLEAR_ARRAY() macro for this.