[boost] Re: requested libraries plus what I'm planning to implement

From: Dave Abrahams (abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-07-26 22:12:35

Dietmar is looking for:
> - A generic pattern matching library. That is, the alphabet on which the
>   patterns are to be matched should not be restricted to be a set of
>   characters. If possible, the interface should fit to typical STL interfaces.
>
> - A networking library built upon sockets. I can provide help if there is a
>   stream buffer to be created for this.

Recently I've been doing a lot of programming with the Python programming
language. In many ways it's very different from C++, but in others it shows
remarkable parallels. In particular, since it's completely dynamic,
everything is generic. One thing it has which C++ doesn't is a wealth of
standard (and other) open-source libraries. For example, it has a library
called 're' which does full Perl-style regular-expression matching. Perhaps
even better than having an STL interface, it is EXACTLY compatible with
Perl's regular expression matcher, meaning that code can easily be ported (I
don't love Perl's greedy matcher, but it works well enough for almost
anything). You'd probably also find your networking library there.

Some of the python libraries are written directly in Python, which is pretty
easy to learn (or at least to read), and others are written in 'C' with a
somewhat clumsy but adequate wrappering technique.

It would not be a bad thing for us to begin looking at and even replicating
some of these interfaces. Even where they are imperfect, I suggest it would
be better to establish a broad base of libraries quickly than to try to do
much correction.

Anyone wishing to look over this stuff can find documentation at
www.python.org. I think some investigation would be a fruitful thing for
boost.

-Dave