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

The easiest solution is to do as C++ itself does. This limits the amount of surprises that your users will experience.

C++ itself is fairly consistent. Both the built-in [] on pointers and std::vector::operator[] have undefined behavior if you use an out-of-bound array index. If you want bounds checking, be explicit and use std::vector::at

Hence, if you do the same for your class, you can document the out-of-bound behavior as "standard".