[boost] Re: Re: Possible boost addition: sub string and const string.

From: Alexei Novakov (alexei_novakov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-27 10:16:34

John,

You wrote:

> I hate to say it, but I *really* don't like the idea of abusing
std::string
> in this way: and IMO it is an abuse: a substring is not conceptually "an
> instance of" std::string.  It's not mutable, and it doesn't manage it's
own
> memory etc etc.  From a practical point of view, it doesn't really work
> either - your substring doesn't actually behave like a std::string in all
> circumstances, so you can't guarantee that it can be used with all string
> based algorithms; std lib algorithms are even entitled to access the
private
> implementation details of std::basic_string (if they're declared as
> friends), so those need not work either :-(
>
> The point of providing a string_traits class, was that it allows classes
> that we haven't yet thought of, heard of, or invented yet(!), to be used
as
> string classes with the string algorithms.  For example it would allow
> Microsoft's CString or Borlands AnsiString classes to be used with these
> algorithms.  Even though we do have a standard string class, string
classes
> are none the less proliferating if anything, especially once you start
> interoperating with COM, CORBRA or whatever.
>
> Anyway just some thoughts...
>
> John Maddock
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/john_maddock/index.htm

Thank you for your thoughts. It might sound funny, but I tend to agree with
you on most of your points. basic_string as it is defined in the stadard is
not very suitable to be used in the way I do. The problem I was trying to
solve with it was the fact that the standard defines tools to work with
basic_string, but it doesn't have any good way to create new user defined
string like types compatible with basic_string so that they can reuse string
utils. In a practical sence I got pretty close to what I was trying to
achieve, but conceptually the proper solution for this would require some
standard revisions.

Best regards.

Alexei Novakov