What is a concrete use case of std::ranges::partial_sort_copy with *different* projections?

Question

I root caused a problem in my code to mismatched projections in std::ranges::partial_sort_copy. After reading cppreference, I couldn't think of a legitimate situation where proj1 & proj2 needed to be different.

What's the motivation for this algorithm providing two different projections?

Answer 1

You need it when there is a mismatch between the type of the input range, and the type of the output range. Consider the following example:

#include <string>
#include <ranges>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::string names[] = {
        "alpha",
        "beta",
        "tau",
        "pi",
        "omega"
    };
    std::string_view shortest_three[3];

    std::ranges::partial_sort_copy(names, shortest_three,
                                   {},                         // std::ranges::less 
                                   &std::string::length,       // proj1
                                   &std::string_view::length); // proj2
    // note: It might not be allowed to take the address of
    //       member functions in std::string/std::string_view.
    //       (unspecified behavior, see [namespace.std]/6)
    //       To be on the safe side, we would have to wrap access to length()
    //       in a lambda expression.

    for (auto view : shortest_three) {
        std::cout << view << '\n';
    }
}

This outputs:

pi
tau
beta

In this example, it would be wasteful if the destination range contained std::string objects, because we could just as well store the shortest three strings as a const char* or std::string_view. As a result, there are two different projections applied here.

Technically you could always create a single projection that covers both cases:

auto proj = []<typename T>(const T& x) {
    // note: in this specific case, we don't need this if-statement,
    //       because the name of the member function is the exact same for
    //       both types. However, this may not always be the case, e.g.
    //       we need .length() for one type and .size() for another.
    if constexpr (std::is_same_v<T, std::string>) {
        return x.length();
    }
    else {
        return x.length();
    }
};

However, providing two separate projections is often more concise.