[Development] How to port from Q_FOREACH to range-based for

[Giuseppe D'Angelo]

(Changing the subject to be on topic)

On 10/06/2019 13:27, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
>> At the cost of saying for the 100th time, before this stuff ends up
>> indexed by Google: you can port away from Q_FOREACH in an automated way
>> only in trivial cases.*NOT*  in the general case.
> How is one supposed to port uses of Q_FOREACH in 1559 places then?

I've wrote it below ↓

>> For the general case you've only got the 5 minutes solution (c&p&rename
>> Q_FOREACH into your codebase; assuming the worst case, of lack of
>> "Qt5Support" or so) or the long walk of checking all usages.

> What things should be checked during that "long walk", except aforemention measures
> to avoid detaching? If we cannot have porting tool, we need at least comprehensive
> porting guide (and if such guide is formalized, I'm pretty sure it will be possible to
> automate it, at least partially)

For instance:

* that in the body of the loop you're not mutating the container through 
the loop variable itself (before: it would affect a copy; now: it 
affects the original; solution: take a copy explicitly);

* that in the body of the loop you're not mutating the container in a 
way that invalidates iterators (and/or possibly references into it).


Here's the catch: from the body you may be calling a function which DOES 
the above mutations. For instance, you're in a member function, 
iterating over some container held as member variable, and from within 
the loop call another member function which mutates that container.


Again, before someone says "who in their minds does this?", _Qt itself_ 
did it.


The conclusion is that either such a porting tool will be incomplete 
and/or incorrect:

* it may give up as soon as it sees a non-local call (= 99.9% of the 
loops), making the tool incomplete (and probably useless);

* or can do some escape/shape analysis to make it more useful, but still 
incomplete (who's going to implement this?);

* or it can ignore the problem and refactor away, at the risk of 
introducing bugs (= incorrect).


Complete and correct requires solving the halting problem.

My 2 c,
-- 
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts

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