Re: [boost] Predictable Layout for certain non-POD data types

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-03-12 21:08:19

At 02:50 PM 3/12/2002, David Abrahams wrote:

 >Ralf and I have authored this paper for the upcoming C++ committee
 >meeting
 >
 >http://cci.lbl.gov/~rwgk/tmp/enhanced_pod_proposal.html

Nice!

Nits: Add the date, ISO project name (Programming Language C++) and contact 
names below the document number.

Make the reference to www.boost.org, module Boost.Python, a hyperlink.

Substantive additional motivation:

By allowing constructors, and thus ensuring initialization to a valid 
state, "Enhanced POD" encourages safer programming practices.  Right now 
certain classes (endian arithmetic, for example) are often designed without 
constructors so that they can be used in contexts requiring POD's. This is 
neither as safe or convenient as if these classes had constructors.

Presumably many of the contexts now requiring POD's will be relaxed to 
require only enhanced POD's. In particular, it would be very helpful if the 
requirements on implementations for POD's in 3.9 paragraphs 2-4 could also 
apply to Enhanced POD types.

--Beman