Re: [boost] Re: outputformatters - using just one decorator string

From: Reece Dunn (msclrhd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-22 16:19:10

John Torjo wrote:
> Rob Stewart wrote:
>> Agreed, but pipes ("|") are easier to grok:
>>
>>   "<elem> | </elem><elem> | </elem>"
>>
> 
> That's fine too.

This again runs into the problem of what if you want '|' in your format 
string? One possibility is to use non-printable characters, e.g. \xFF, 
but I don't think this would have widespread support.

Implementing escaping for the above will complicate the evaluation of 
the format string as you cannot use str.find( "|" ). One possibility is 
to check if '\' exists before '|' after a find; if yes, repeat. Thus '\' 
becomes context-sensitive. This approach leads to "< |\\| >" for "< 
a\\b\\c >" formatting being ill-defined.

Regards,
Reece