RE: [boost] Re: static sized strings

From: Reece Dunn (msclrhd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-05-10 07:46:43

John Nagle wrote:
>John Nagle wrote:
>>    I've been doing some work on this too.  I made char_string
>>a subclass of a non-templated char_string_base, so you can
>>pass references to char_string_base.  This has the disadvantage
>>of requiring a vtable, but makes the class much more useful.
>>
>>    I'll put this someplace publicly visible in the next day
>>or two.
>
>  It's at
>	http://www.animats.com/source
>Take a look and see if you like the direction this is going.
>Thanks.

Hmm. Which way to go? My latest version has been generalized to incorporate 
char/wchar_t support, so you can use wide-character strings. It also uses a 
StringPolicy class (i.e. char_traits) so you can control the length, copy, 
comparison, etc functions that are used.

BTW: the reason I use the const char( & s )[ m ] on compilers that support 
it is because this picks up the string literals in order to remove a call to 
strlen, thus improving performance.

Which design do you like better: using a virtual base class, or using a 
policy template? I have been working on providing an interface similar to 
std::basic_string, hence some of my latest design choices.

Ideally, the class should:
*  safeguard against buffer overflow on static-sized character arrays;
*  interoperate with classic C string operations;
*  interoperate with std::basic_string;
*  provide support for null-terminated strings and also fixed-length 
strings;
*  prevent silly mistakes by the user, ideally providing compile-time errors 
wherever possible.

At the moment, both implementations provide a different subset of those 
aims. Do you mind if I look into this and let you know what I come up with.

Regards,
Reece

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