Re: [boost] Re: string algorithms review

From: Darren Cook (darren_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-10-19 19:01:46

The below (*) argument seems convincing, so I think explicitly named 
_inplace() functions would be better.

(not had chance to look at the library yet however)

>>> s.trim() is what IMHO would be an intuitive interface to changes s's
>>> state. Sadly, it's not possible to provide it.

A boost::string that derived from std::string and added all the _inplace() 
functions would be nice.

Darren

*:
> There is a difference: If you write
> 
> trim( s );
> 
> [copying version assumed] you expect that 's' is now trimmed. And you 
> usually check this as when writing code, you run it to see if it works. 
> If it's not trimmed, you look for the reason and it's IMHO not hard to 
> find this bug now. But if you write
> 
> std::string t = trim( s );
> 
> [modifying version assumed], this has the effect you expect, namely 't' 
> contains a trimmed version of 's'. The problem is, that this has a side 
> effect on 's'. In a larger code base, these side effects sometimes show 
> up very late and some of them are really hard to find. Well, of course 
> this is just my personal experience.
> 
> Regards, Daniel
>