[boost] Re: compile-time binary constants

From: Gennaro Prota (gennaro_prota_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-01-19 15:16:56

On Sun, 19 Jan 2003 12:29:25 -0700, Greg Colvin
<Gregory.Colvin_at_[hidden]> wrote:

>At 12:11 PM 1/19/2003, David Abrahams wrote:
>
>>As interesting as this may be, the discussion of string literals as
>>template parameters is off-topic for this group.  Please either
>>connect this discussion back to library design or take it elsewhere.
>
>Agreed.  An interesting question is how to design around
>the existing language to get the effect of having string
>literals.  Such attempts are often a good way to tell
>whether and how the language might need to be extended.

I agree too that the discussion is off-topic, of course. The reason
why I often seize the opportunity to point out language limitations
here is that many boosters are committee members too, and if
limitations are recognized to be important for *real code*, then it is
more likely that someone may bring up the issue in the committee
itself. In particular, I'm under the impression that static processing
of string-literals is an important area of meta-programming, for now
ignored. If we had it I guess we would have already discovered
important applications (just like it has happened with templates
themselves, for which usages have been discovered far beyond the
intent of their inventor(s))

Genny.