Re: [boost] End Formal Review: Boost Cast Library

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-06 13:27:32

At 01:23 PM 1/6/2001 -0500, David Abrahams wrote:

 >>  >1) Rename to Boost Conversion Library for compatibility with future
 >>  >functionality that sounds quite interesting (unless alot of people
 >>  >really hate this idea).
 >>
 >> Done.
 >
 >Well, I'm just one person, but I never liked this idea. What's the
 >difference between conversion and casting? Well, nothing, except that
 >casting is sooo much more specific. Casting deals with type conversion. 
Are
 >we planning on handing unit (e.g. lengths/monetary) conversion in this 
same
 >library? What about religious conversion ;-) ?

Well, you were outvoted, I think.  Kevlin's logic carried the day, IIRC.

 >Conversions are not necessarily casts, but casts are always conversions.
 >A cast is an explicit conversion using an operator-based syntax (well,
 >one of many, to be precise). For instance, although a popular term,
 >there's no such thing as an implicit cast.
 >
 >So, calling a conversions library a cast library if it included non-
 >cast-like functions would be a category error :->

--Beman