Add concepts Std::three_way_comparable and Std::three_way_comparable_with as well as an algorithm Std::lexicographical_compare_three_way to provide library utilities for the <=> comparison operator.
While C++20 introduces the operator <=> into the language, not all standard libraries have implemented this comparison operator for std data structures, like tuple or array. Iterable containers could easily implement this operator using the lexicographic_compare_three_way algorithms that works with iterators. Since not all types can be compared with <=>, we also need to provide the concept definition that checks whether a type supports it. Also these concepts should be in the standard library, but are not yet fully implemented, especially in libc++-13.
Applications
This utility would allow to provide a three-way comparison operator for our Dune data structures FieldVector, DynamicVector and maybe also for the multi-dimensional array/span structures Std::mdarray and Std::mdspan. Especially for multi-indices a comparison and lexicographical ordering would be nice to have.
Simon Praetorius authored