opencog-dev team mailing list archive

["Joel Pitt" <joel.pitt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

There are an awful lot of overloaded getHandleSet methods in AtomTable
that return HandleEntry pointers and in AtomSpace that return
OutputIterators.

Is there a reason for making them overloaded instead of making them
explicit in describing what type of Handle set they return?

i.e. getHandleSetByImportance(AttentionValue::sti_t,
AttentionValue::sti_t upperBound = 32767)
instead of
getHandleSet(AttentionValue::sti_t, AttentionValue::sti_t upperBound = 32767)

getHandleSetByTargets(Type*, bool*, Arity, Type type = ATOM, bool
subclass = true)
instead of
getHandleSet(Type*, bool*, Arity, Type type = ATOM, bool subclass = true)

For the latter example, there are several overloaded methods that get
a handle set by what atoms have certain targets, and it'd make sense
to leave these overloaded. Unfortunately, this change would take a
while to differentiate which of the overloaded method each call refers
to, but I think it'd be worth it to make the interface friendlier to
developers.

I guess whether to do this depends on more for_each iterators like
Linas created should be made for each equivalent getHandleSet...

Any thoughts?

J