RE: [boost] Re: Boost Library Guidelines

From: Paul A. Bristow (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-04-30 17:23:48

| -----Original Message-----
| From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden]
| [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]]On Behalf Of Ken Hagan
| Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 10:24 AM
| To: boost_at_[hidden]
| Subject: [boost] Re: Boost Library Guidelines
|
|
| > William E. Kempf wrote...
| >> pragmas.  As a "best practice suggestion", it's a great idea... as a
| >> requirement, I'd have to voice an opinion against.
|
| Paul A. Bristow wrote:
| >
| > I absolutely agree, but I feel it would be useful encourage authors
| > to try.
|
| Playing devil's advocate, but why?

Because:

1  I believe that using the highest warning level tends to increase code
quality.
For example,  templated code is often only tested with builtin types, and
without an explicit static_cast will fail with user-defined types.

2  It is confusing to have unnecessary warnings to worry about.

3  The user will almost certainly find the ecletic code that Boosters tend to
write difficult to decide what the warnings really mean.

4  The author is best placed to think about conversion issues.  Aiming for
strict focuses his mind.

But I am NOT advocating extensive use of #pragma to suppress warnings, though I
believe they do have a very useful side effect of documenting the issues.

I am mainly concerned with conversion and static casting.

Paul