[boost] Re: Design discussion: easy i/o

From: Ed Brey (brey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-03-06 17:07:12

From: "Dave Steffen" <steffend_at_[hidden]>

> Greg Colvin writes:
>  > > Dave Abrahams writes:
>  > > [...]
>  > >       cout << "First line" << nl << "Second line" << nl;
>  >
>  > Just to save two keystrokes?  Well, four total in this line.
>
>  Well, it's not just the keystrokes. I didn't mind typing "endl", but
>  wanted to avoid gratuitously flushing the buffer. And I find that
>  "nl" is a lot easier to type than "'\n'", my fingers don't have to
>  leave the home keys and all that. ;-)

Replacing endl with nl trades one efficiency problem for another (albeit
smaller) one.  As it stands now, as long as the industry literature makes
clear to users "don't use std::endl unless a flush is called for", hopefully
users will turn to the alterative of:
    cout << "First line\nSecond line";
or one of its more readable cousins like:
    cout <<
        "First line" "\n"
        "Second line";

Providing a nl encourages the code that is the equivalent of:
    cout << "First line" << "\n" << "Second line";

which, at least under VC and gcc, doesn't get optimized away.

>  BTW this is one of the less important things we should think about
>  fixing/tweaking in the streams library... I'm much more interested in
>  some of the proposals for formatting.

Agreed.  Definitely not worth the time trying to put in a "fix", especially
when there is a current solution which is readable and generates optimal
code.