Hello!

Is there a reason why the following features are not included
in the standard library?

1) operator[] for const maps

The lack of this operator seems to be an unecessary restriction,
since it would be possible to throw an exception if a non-existent
key was queried with this operator.
The way it is defined today forces me to use find() if I want
to work with a const map, even if I know which entries do
exist. Since the operator[] syntax is easier to read, I
then prefer not to use const maps. (You may disagree whether it
is the right choice :).

2) bool contains(key) for sets and maps

Meanwhile, the standard contains a 'clear' method for all
containers, which allows to avoid the ugly and error-prone

  aContainer.erase(aContainer.begin(), aContainer.end())

But why isn't there some 'contains' (or similar) function,
that could save me from typing

  anAssociative.find(key) != anAssociative.end()

Any hints?

--
Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann
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