Hi Robert,

This would be what we'd call an "editorial change" — one with no
functional/behavioral change, just fiddling with the wording (hopefully for
the better).

You've identified an inconsistency in style between
https://eel.is/c++draft/string.view.template.general
and
https://eel.is/c++draft/basic.string.general
https://eel.is/c++draft/vector.overview
https://eel.is/c++draft/deque.overview
https://eel.is/c++draft/flat.set.defn
etc. etc.

I agree with you that this is worth fixing — not primarily because the
wording in [string.view] is *confusing* to the reader (as Jason said,
there's really only one interpretation that makes sense), but rather
because the wording in [string.view] is *inconsistent* with the established
practice in all those other sections. Deviations from the best practice
ought to have a reason; and in this case I don't think there is a valid
reason — it's just gratuitously inconsistent.

Editorial changes — unless unusually large, subtle, or controversial — are
generally handled via pull requests, not papers.

So your next step would be to clone https://github.com/cplusplus/draft ,
grep for all instances of `using reverse_iterator =`, find all the
inconsistent instances, make a commit that fixes them all at once, and then
pull-request it (N.B.: humbly ;) and including a link to this discussion).
I think that'd be a good idea, and I'm willing to help with it if you need
help. Unless of course someone shows the reason why [string.view] *is*
inconsistent — it's possible there is a reason and I'm just not seeing it.

N.B.: Pull requests are the appropriate venue for *editorial*
(non-behavioral) changes. Pull requests are *not* an appropriate mechanism
for feature requests or behavioral changes of any kind.

–Arthur


On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 12:08 PM Robert Allan Schwartz via Std-Proposals <
std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Hi Jason,
>
> You're correct, there is nothing that *needs* to be changed.
>
> I was only proposing an improvement for purposes of clarity, and to
> prevent a potential error if a future edition of the Standard mistakenly
> reverses the order of those two lines.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Robert
>
> > On Jan 18, 2023, at 12:03 PM, Jason McKesson via Std-Proposals <
> std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 11:54 AM Robert Allan Schwartz via
> > Std-Proposals <std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Today I am making my first posts to this group. Please forgive me if I
> make mistakes. Thank you.
> >>
> >> Here is the context:
> >>
> >> Header <string_view>:
> >>
> >> template<class charT, class traits = char_traits>
> >> class basic_string_view {
> >> public:
> >> // types
> >> using traits_type = traits;
> >> using value_type = charT;
> >> using pointer = value_type*;
> >> using const_pointer = const value_type*;
> >> using reference = value_type&;
> >> using const_reference = const value_type&;
> >> using const_iterator = implementation-defined ; // see 24.4.2.2
> >> using iterator = const_iterator;228
> >> using const_reverse_iterator = reverse_iterator<const_iterator>;
> >> using reverse_iterator = const_reverse_iterator;
> >>
> >> I understand that the alias declaration for const_reverse_iterator uses
> the only declaration of reverse_iterator that is in scope at that moment,
> which is std::reverse_iterator, but then reverse_iterator is defined again
> on the next line, which creates an ordering dependency.
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be safer and clearer to say:
> >>
> >> using const_reverse_iterator = std::reverse_iterator<const_iterator>;
> >>
> >> This would eliminate the ordering issue.
> >
> > There is no ordering issue. Because `basic_string_view` exists inside
> > the `std` namespace, `reverse_iterator` will refer to the namespace
> > declaration. There is nothing that needs to be changed.
> > --
> > Std-Proposals mailing list
> > Std-Proposals_at_[hidden]
> > https://lists.isocpp.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/std-proposals
>
> --
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>