Re: [boost] Re: Technical session at the October C++ meeting?

From: Mark Rodgers (mark.rodgers_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-08-15 14:50:56

From: "George A. Heintzelman" <georgeh_at_[hidden]>
> I'd like to speak up for the 'functional' library, which I think is a 
> very important ease-of-use extension of the standard library. It also 
> uses call_traits, which uses type_traits, so those are obviously more 
> important. One of the things it deals with is references to references; 
> if the core language were to address that directly, that aspect of the 
> library could easily be dropped.

Yes, I'm not sure what we should do with functional.  On the one hand 
it demonstrates how a core language change isn't strictly necessary,
so that part becomes redundant if we get the language change anyway.
It's other claim to fame is that it avoids the necessity for ptr_fun,
which is definitely a good thing which perhaps should be standardised.

However, the whole thing is becomes obsolete if an ET library becomes
standardised.  If that is likely to occur then I'd say we should just 
forget about improving the standard adapters and instead deprecate
them.   But if a standard ET library is not likely for the next standard
it would be nice if boost/functional.hpp-like improvements were to be 
standardised in the interim.

>Anyway, I use functional all the time now, and don't know if I could 
>deal with all the shenanigans to use the strict standard functional 
>anymore...

Thanks.  It's nice to hear that it is proving valuable to at least
one other person.  :-)

Mark