When implementing operator[] how should I include bounds checking?

Question

First of all I apologize for the long lead up to such a simplistic question.

I am implementing a class which serves as a very long 1 dimensional index on a space fil

Answer 1

Unless I'm drastically misunderstanding something,

return point[ index % dimensions ];

is not bounds checking at all. It's returning a real value from a totally different part of the line, which will make it much harder to detect bugs.

I would either:

1. Throw an exception or an assertion (though you said you don't want to do so)
2. Simply dereference point past the array in a "natural" way (i.e. just skip any internal checking). The advantage over the % is that they're more likely (though undefined is undefined) to get "weird" values and/or an access violation

In the end, the caller is violating your pre-conditions, and you can do whatever you please. But I think these are the most reasonable options.

Also consider what Cătălin said about incorporating built-in STL collections if that's reasonable.