Re: [boost] Re: [ANN] Spirit C++ parser framework.

From: Douglas Gregor (gregod_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-05-24 22:13:57

On Thursday 24 May 2001 10:43 pm, you wrote:
[snip]
> Yes, very subjective. I still have a strong opinion towards retaining the +
> closure
> and the * kleene star.  These are used very often and I don't want to type
> repeat<n>(a) many times. I just want to do *a.
>
> Look at it this way. C uses the * for multiplication (infix) and pointer
> deref
> (prefix). If they (the original authors) though that this will be
> confusing, they
> would have used something like deref(ptr) instead. Would you have wanted
> that?
>
> I'd like to propose changing >> to +, keeping the prefix +, * and adding
> an iterator.
>
> Joel de Guzman

This is one of those reasons that many are against operator overloading. I 
agree that "+" is better than ">>" for concatenation, only because there is 
precedent for such abuse in the standard. 

However, the prefix + and * are doubly bad. The overloaded meanings have 
absolutely nothing to do with the original meanings of either operator and, 
perhaps worse, it doesn't conform to the syntax used in theoretical language 
applications either. Essentially the syntax conforms to neither C++ nor the 
domain it is intended to model, and I think that will become overly 
confusing. 

        Doug