RE: [boost] Most needed/desired features in C++

From: Noah Stein (noah_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-18 17:54:06

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Herb Sutter [mailto:hsutter_at_[hidden]]
> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 12:12 AM
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Pardon if this has already been discussed on the list, but I'd like your
> feedback on this question: "What are the most needed or desired
> features in
> C++ for modern library writing in general and Boost in particular?"

Trying not to re-hash anything already proposed:

1) Finalization: In addition to class finalization, I have a number of
protocol classes in which I'd like to finalize a member function in order to
preserve a "contract" throughout all derived classes.  My proposed syntax
would be:

        class Base
        {
                int	SomeFunc() = 1;
        };

Since a pure virtual is specified using "=0", "=1" appears a natural way to
specify a concrete, non-overridable member function.

2) I'd like to be able to query if a class has a trivial constructor to use
in specializations.  It would also be nice if I could query whether a class
has a given member function.  This would reduce the use of traits classes
that must be explicitly overloaded to specify optimizing behaviors, i.e. a
swap() impelentation could check for and use a member function swap if
present automatically instead of requiring a speicializaiton.

-- Noah