[boost] boost::implicit_cast - no documentation, misleading header comment

From: Phil Richards (news_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-17 07:03:44

In a moment of outstanding boredom, I ran the regression tests for
the latest gcc 4.0.1 snapshot under Linux.  Looking through the
fails in the HTML report I noticed that boost::implicit_cast was
shown as failing test implicit_cast_fail.

The output of the test is:

../libs/conversion/test/implicit_cast_fail.cpp: In function 'int test_main(int, char**)':
../libs/conversion/test/implicit_cast_fail.cpp:21: error: conversion from 'const char*' to non-scalar type 'foo' requested
../libs/conversion/test/implicit_cast_fail.cpp:21: warning: unused variable 'x'
../libs/conversion/test/implicit_cast_fail.cpp:22: warning: control reaches end of non-void function
(failed-as-expected) ../bin/boost/libs/conversion/test/implicit_cast_fail.test/gcc/debug/implicit_cast_fail.o

Given that (as far as my understanding of the test suite goes)
compilation failure is the expected behaviour, why is this highlighted
as a test failure in the HTML report?

Anyway, off I trundle to find out what it is supposed to do.
Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any documentation for
"implicit_cast".  So I look in the header file and find:

    // implementation originally suggested by C. Green in
    // http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg00886.php

And dutifully follow the link to find an article by Peter Dimov
about "Perfect Forwarding".

I apologise if I'm being dumb and missing something obvious,
but something looks a little screwy...

phil
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