[boost] Re: [variant] Important syntax changes

From: Eric Friedman (ebf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-07 16:18:55

David Abrahams wrote:

> Eric Friedman <ebf_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 
> 
>>While some of the names are a bit longer, I feel the changes are
>>beneficial to the library.
>>
>>I will soon update the documentation to reflect these changes.
> 
> 
> FWIW, I'm a little sorry I planted the "make_" prefix in your mind.
> It's usually only used for runtime functions, i.e. object generators
> (http://www.boost.org/more/generic_programming.html#object_generator).

I was worried about confusion that might result from simply calling the 
metafunctions 'recursive_variant' or 'variant_over'. Though attempting 
to instantiate these types directly (rather than their exposed ::type) 
would immediately lead to an error, I feel it might be less than obvious 
to the user why the error has occurred.

That is why I chose the make_XXX names. My intention was to echo names 
such as mpl::make_identity.

 From the link you sent, it seems like the recommended names would be:

   recursive_variant_generator
   variant_over_generator
   ...and so on

I'm not sure these names are too obvious or clear, and they certainly 
are ugly.

So I think keeping the make_XXX names is a good idea. What do you think?

Eric