[boost] Re: Stdint header?

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-07-28 19:59:14

At 09:06 PM 7/28/99 +0100, Kevlin Henney wrote:

>The alternative is to provide a template based solution, rather than
death
>by a thousand typedefs/#defines. I did something like this, and
outlined
>the details in a couple of articles for Overload when Sean was
editing it a
>few years ago. I'd be happy to dig it up and submit the code as a
library.
>
>Thoughts?

If the source of stdint.h was anyone else, I could get all excited
about doing a better job using C++ features.  But even though C++ has
grown up and been out on its own for years now, I still find it
awfully hard to ignore the C committee. A separate C++ solution would
have to be quite a bit better to be of interest.  
A little bit better isn't enough. It would be interesting to hear if
others feel that way.

Also, who wants to do it over again if a standards committee has
already done the work?  My guess is that many programmers will start
using <stdint.h> as it becomes better known.

As far as "a thousand typedefs/#defines" goes, the C committee
removed the most objectionable stuff into a separate header
(inttypes.h), and put the remaining <stdint.h> macros inside
conditionals, so they only appear if you ask for them. What's left is
a managable number of typedefs.  Certainly not perfect, but a whole
lot better that the original proposal.

Thanks for the input,

--Beman