It is with my deepest apologies that I say I have failed to make ranges reconstructible in a palatable way for C++20.

For those of you out of the loop, I wrote a paper called p1664 - reconstructible_range s. I then wrote a blog post about why it is a generally good idea, to generally positive reception. The goal was to put this into the Standard for C++23, and I had little to no desire to work it in for C++20. Fast forward a few days after I wrote the paper, I was told that the concept was essentially the foundation of 3 separate papers: p1391, p1394, and p1739. Each of these papers wanted to give an iterator, iterator and range constructor to string_view and span , as well as take advantage of that fact in places in std::ranges .

The premise was that having expression-template levels of nested types and type explosions is not a good idea at all, and that if we could “flatten” the hierarchy we should do that. Thusly, it was crowned as C++20 material mostly because if we did not do this, it would become an API breaking change to later change the return types. As an example, consider the following C++20, CTADeriffic code snippets:

std :: vector vec { 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 }; std :: span s { vec . data (), 5 }; auto v = s | views :: drop ( 1 ) | views :: take ( 10 ) | views :: drop ( 1 ) | views :: take ( 10 );

decltype(v) is std::ranges::take_view<std::ranges::drop_view<std::ranges::take_view<std::ranges::drop_view<std::span<int, dynamic_extent>>>>> . This is the status quo, and what you will end up with today. Compare to after the application of P1664:

std :: vector vec { 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 }; std :: span s { vec . data (), 5 }; auto v = s | views :: drop ( 1 ) | views :: take ( 10 ) | views :: drop ( 1 ) | views :: take ( 10 );

decltype(v) is just std::span<int> .

That’s Awesome!

Yeah, it is pretty magical, right? Not only do we get back the same type we put in our algorithms ( span<int> ), P1664 made it into an “exposition only” concept in the Standard. This meant that as long as you have a constructor on your type that:

took your view’s iterator and sentinel as my_iterator, my_sentinel arguments;

arguments; or, took your view’s iterator and sentinel as std::ranges::subrange<my_iterator, my_sentinel> arguments

the ranges would always be reconstructible. It meant that we could advertise such as a way to enable your ranges, when put into Standard adaptors, to get flattened. Everyone would be on an equal playing field because the Standard would use the same concept to potentially flatten and optimize the type representation of a handful of ranges: no special rules.

For std::ranges , this would be applied to ranges like view::counted , view::take , and view::drop at first: a good, limited set of ranges for C++20. As more ranges were going to be added in the Standard, I had a working list of things that would need to be reconstructible to avoid having to instantiate a std::ranges::subrange<...> of it and losing what type information the user had in any given view type. While having a generic subrange of iterator and sentinel is flexible, it does not take into account the way the class is laid out or any other nice members the original view may have. Keeping the same type put into an algorithm is wildly useful, for these reasons.

Coming up with reconstructible-range

When I first conceived of reconstructible ranges, I did so because every single range in Eric Niebler’s range-v3, Casey Carter’s cmcstl2, Christopher DiBella’s example slides and code during his nice CppCon talks, standard C++ containers, and – after P1391 and P1394 – most Standard Library views obeyed the concept. That is, if there was a constructor for my_iterator, my_sentinel , or std::ranges::subrange<my_iterator, my_sentinel> , it simply put the range back together. If it didn’t have that constructor, it wouldn’t put the range back together and the concept would report false . No range I found to date behaved the wrong way in its presence.

It seemed like a sound premise. We passed one meeting – Köln 2019 C++ Standards Meeting – with P1664, with Library Evolution Working Group’s approval. This was extremely important for my work on phd.text . I had to routinely and fundamentally take people’s ranges apart with ranges::[c]begin and ranges::[c]end , which meant many of my algorithms had to unfortunately return hideous std::ranges::subrange s to the user for things that very much should have been reconstructible from their [c]begin / [c]end iterator. I used it literally everywhere as a way to ensure the user got back their std::string_view s and std::text_view s that they gave me, rather than giving them std::ranges::subrange<std::string_view::iterator, std::string_view::iterator> and other messy types that did not have the APIs they were used to.

It worked well.

At this past Belfast 2019 C++ Standards Meeting, LEWG re-approved the design direction and sent it on its way to Library Working Group. LWG helped fix up the wording and with a small little celebration, it ended up on the “Final Motions” page.

For those of you who do not know, while everyone can vote and move things forward in C++ Study and Working Groups during the week in the informal “straw polls”, Formal Motions still must be approved by the full collection of ISO voting members and National Bodies on Saturday in Plenary. Most motions placed on the page generally have consensus and get put in with unanimous consent by this point. Occasionally, things come to a head and a formal vote is counted by the Convener.

A Shot from the Dark

An e-mail showed up in my inbox, on Friday after the day had concluded, the last information straw polling session before the final Plenary session Saturday morning. It’s title:

Objection to Motion XX - reconstructible_range

To which my immediate mental reaction was:

… Well. Fuck me.

Similarly, a Twitter DM hit me that night as well:

… Consider the following view, which drops the first element of the range with which it is constructed:

struct pop_front_view { int * m_begin , * m_end ; pop_front_view () = default ; pop_front_view ( int * begin , int * end ) : m_begin ( begin == end ? begin : begin + 1 ), m_end ( end ) { } int * begin () const { return m_begin ; } int * end () const { return m_end ; } };

The reconstructible-range machinery will erroneously use this constructor and give surprising and incorrect results…

The above range is reconstructible, syntactically, but it fails the semantic requirements that it “puts the range back together”. I also did not have wording that required that it must be semantically reconstructible. I will be perfectly honest: I’ve never seen someone write a range like this, but it’s totally valid code that would break reconstructible ranges.

E-mail threads started flying behind the scenes and off the Committee Reflector. Discussions started happening and circulating. And unfortunately,

there was nothing I could do.

Just a Visitor

The Saturday Plenary is not really a place where I have any authority or power. When motions get read and objections to unanimous consent are polled, only ISO Voting Members have sway.

I am not one of those members.

This meant I could not do anything about P1664 being deferred to later, paper author or not. This is one of the dangers of being a part of the Committee but not officially under any organization’s umbrella: when the real vote gets taken you have to rely on someone from a National Body or similar organization to take part. As given by the (soon to be observable) lack of P1664 in the C++ Working Draft,

no, P1664 didn’t survive Plenary. It was deferred to Prague for re-litigation and reconsideration under a potentially new design.

… Now what?

Not sure. Status Quo applies: ranges aren’t reconstructible and you still get a bunch of template spew. I was tasked with making an alternative design before the Prague meeting next year in February.

The magic word here is “design”: that means I need to go backwards, to LEWG if I get a paper in the mailing. And then I need to rewrite the wording, and go to LWG afterwards. The wording should not be too hard, but if someone objects to the design then this gets stopped all over again, and considered dead for C++20 (or for the rest of eternity, without Yet Another Design or New Information). So I need to publish the paper, defend a modified design early in Prague, take any changes into account, move it onto LWG’s absolutely stuffed schedule, and then move it through LWG again. All in one meeting.

I am not confident in my ability to do this.

Nevertheless, the direction people pushed me in was adding an extra trait template, like:

template < typename T > inline constexpr bool enable_reconstructible_range_v = false ; template < typename T > concept reconstructible - range = // exposition only enable_reconstructible_range_v < T > && forwarding - range < T > && ...; // etc. etc.

Yes, false by default. It means no range is reconstructible, and you have to opt into it. There was some mild assurance std::basic_string_view and std::span would get it turned on in the Standard. But that defied the point. Did you write your own view type for one reason or another, or because the Standard didn’t ship theirs yet ( unbounded_view , mdspan , etc.)? Well, now you would need to #include <ranges> and then explicitly enable this to not have your type turn into a fountain of template instantiations if you filtered it through some of the simpler range adaptors.

It’s a quick fix. A conservative fix. It protects pop_front_view and code like it that I had overlooked. This new reconstructible-range concept design the big players were e-mailing me about, this… this so-called ‘fix’…

it sickened me.

Over my dead, non-National, non-ISO, non-Voting body would we force every single person to #include <ranges> and template <> inline constexpr bool enable_reconstructible_range_v<MyView> = true; . But I had to solve this for Prague. What design could I possibly come up with in time that I could re-ship in phd.text and verify wasn’t a pile of insanity to implement and work with? Nothing about this felt good or right. I would not be able to live with a reconstructible concept that required constant opt-in or annoying enable statements. Maybe I couldn’t fix it for C++20. This was supposed to be a C++23 paper. So, well…

Taking the Nuclear Option

Dear …: I withdraw P1664.

I didn’t think I would ever pull something out of consideration for C++, especially something as useful as reconstructible-range . But compromising the design for a handful of ranges that exhibited special behavior was not acceptable to me. It was especially sad to me to require everyone to include/import <ranges> . Sure, this means view::drop , view::take , and other C++20 ranges might not get any reconstructible benefits from now until the end of time. Or – as is currently being discussed – maybe those benefits will be allowed for certain range adaptors, but strictly pinned to specific class types like std::basic_string_view and std::span only.

I dislike the “specific types blessed here” option as well, because it reminds me of std::invoke . Specifically, std::reference_wrapper is blessed by std::invoke in the Standard’s wording to behave like a “real reference” when performing overload resolution. Unfortunately, any other reference-wrapper type in your code base is essentially verboten and does not receive the same treatment. It may look, smell, and feel like a std::reference_wrapper , but it’s not allowed. This means your vector<int>* + int index reference type? Doesn’t work. Your pointer-bit-stealing reference type? Also doesn’t work.

std::invoke ’s solution for std::reference_wrapper is non-generic. It does not scale and it’s utterly worthless for the ecosystem as a whole: a small bandage on a much larger problem. Whatever they figure for view::take and view::drop might not be generic and might not scale at all. It could result in clean interfaces for the standard’s own types ( std::span , std::string_view ), but throw you the middle finger for your own types ( llvm::StringRef , Corrade::ArrayView , my::md_span ). That really sucks, but in the grand scheme of things?

Not my issue.

I embarked on this journey intending C++23, to make sure that std::text would be the best that it is. With P1391 and P1394 getting accepted, two important types are going to be reconstructible in spirit, which will serve my purposes well. Types like unbounded_view – which I talk about as an important step for proper safety in my presentation – are not yet in the Standard, and so for my use cases I can still get the right behavior by keeping a close eye on its standardization (and rewriting my own version of it in my library).

I can also come up with a more flexible design for reconstructibles itself, rather than one based off of just the constructor. I have a few good ideas that will prevent having to #include <ranges> yet still, and which will prevent strong coupling between your type, the <ranges> header, and the downstream consequences of such. It will also prevent the archaic trait specialization that I see as a last resort to fixing things, and that has always caused me no shortage of problems in sol2’s user interactions.

Instead of having 2-3 months to fix it before Prague, I’ll have 2-3 years to do it properly for C++23. view::drop and view::take can have all the deeply-nested template spew in the world, or type-specific half-fixes.

As long as I can keep it out of phd.text , that’s a win for me.

See you in C++23. 💚