What I can understand from the documentation :
Disjoint need to associate a rank and a parent (in the forest tree) to each element. Since you might want to work with any kind of data you may,for example, not always want to use a map for the parent: with integer an array is sufficient. You also need a rank foe each element (the rank needed for the union-find).
You’ll need two “properties” :
- one to associate an integer to each element (first template argument), the rank
- one to associate an element to an other one (second template argument), the fathers
On an example :
std::vector<int> rank (100);
std::vector<int> parent (100);
boost::disjoint_sets<int*,int*> ds(&rank[0], &parent[0]);
Arrays are used &rank[0], &parent[0] to the type in the template is int*
For a more complex example (using maps) you can look at Ugo’s answer.
You are just giving to the algorithm two structures to store the data (rank/parent) he needs.