Re: Comments on lexical_cast

From: Kevlin Henney (kevlin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-08 16:16:43

In message <B62F1B92.3B0%darylew_at_[hidden]>, Daryle Walker
<darylew_at_[hidden]> writes
>on 11/7/00 8:44 PM, Kevlin Henney at kevlin_at_[hidden] wrote:
>> My concern with this is that there are too many special cases, a potentially
>> unbounded list. However, I think this may be a suitable approach for something
>> that Dave Abrahams mentioned in passing at the Toronto mtg, and is mentioned
>> briefly in the future directions section of the lexical_cast documentation: an
>> interpret_cast that makes appropriate dispatch decisions (eg lexical_cast vs
>> numeric_cast) and provides appropriate specialisations (as you have outlined).
>
>Why would these cases by a potentially unbounded list?  The four special
>cases cover all scenarios where at least one of the types is a basic_string
>type.  When a std::basic_string<> type is involved, you probably don't want
>the force the use of the std::string for the implementation, since the
>former has the same operations as latter, and using the former is more
>direct.

What I meant by unbounded list, is why restrict ourselves to just
std::basic_string? I'm inclined to think that lexical_cast should do
what it does as directly and consistently as possible, and leave the
specialisations to something else.

Kevlin
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