Re: [boost] Re: lexical_cast

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-11-21 10:47:53

At 03:10 PM 11/21/2000 +0000, Kevlin Henney wrote:

 >In message <8vdd7u+5ti9_at_[hidden]>, Daniel Frey <d.frey_at_[hidden]> writes
 >...
 >>When writing an application that parses and executes user-supplied
 >>strings, calculates on these data and an additional database and
 >>finally generating HTML-pages from within C++, and trying to have both
 >>a good latency and throughput, you'll use it a billion times if it's
 >>fast enough :) Specialization is of course an option here, while
 >>keeping the nice syntax. I'll therefore start using it and when the
 >>profiler shows, that it takes up too much time, I'll write special
 >>versions for my most common cases.
 >
 >Yup, this would be the preferred approach. Although, that said, there is
 >currently no Boost policy on specialisations. [Aside: Should there be
 >one? Certainly, replicating the standard's policy would probably
 >introduce more problems than it solved.]

It has taken more effort than expected to nail down the lexical_cast 
semantics.  Let's go ahead and get it formally reviewed so people can start 
using it widely.

Over time we can discuss Boost specialization policy in general, and 
performance specializations of lexical_cast in particular.  We can talk 
about added signatures, too, such as passing in the stream as an 
argument.  But let's not delay the basic lexical_cast.hpp any further.

--Beman