Elements of Programming

Chapter 12

Composite Objects

Chapters 6 through 11 presented algorithms working on collections of objects (data structures) through iterators or coordinate structures in isolation from construction, destruction, and structural mutation of these collections: Collections themselves were not viewed as objects. This chapter provides examples of composite objects, starting with pairs and constant-size arrays and ending with a taxonomy of implementations of dynamic sequences. We describe a general schema of a composite object containing other objects as its parts. We conclude by demonstrating the mechanism enabling efficient behavior of rearrangement algorithms on nested composite objects.

12.1 Simple Composite Objects

To understand how to extend regularity ...