[boost] Re: FORMAL review of "Output Formatters" - votes needed

From: Roland Richter (roland_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-27 04:23:38

John Torjo wrote:
> Dear boosters,
> 
> There's been quite a hot debate about "Output Formatters" library.
> 
> Reece has provided some input facilies in this library as well.
> This has drawn people to either sides: some don't want these input 
> facilities, while others do.
> 
> To conclude, I would like to ask you to vote:
> - "Yes" - in favor of Input facilities
> - "No"  - don't want Input facilities.

  I vote "Yes", but I realize that I'm already outnumbered
  and I'm too late.

  The dilemma I see is that the outfmt library is somewhere
  between serialization (boost::serialization) and pretty-printing
  (boost::format). IMO, outfmt provides *both* at a basic level
  in that it simply adds streaming operators <<  and >> to STL
  containers, which, for some reason, are currently missing.

  Then, again, the name "Output formatters" is already misleading.

> Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
>> "Reece Dunn" <msclrhd_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
>> 
>> | [2] The direct result of not supporting [1] is that you cannot utilize
>> | Roland Richter's usage:
>> |
>> |     std::list<char> cl = lexical_cast< std::list<char> >( "[ a, b, c ]" );
>> 
>> just a remark: this can be done with boost.assign:
>> 
>> std::list<char> cl = list_of('a')('b')('c');

  Not if the string "[ a, b, c ]" comes from a file or, as in my
  case, from the Java side via a JNI interface.

  This does not require much formatting; to be precise, it requires
  formatting just because lexical_cast does not accept whitespace.

  Then, again, as Vladimir Prus wrote:

 > I've made a noise about this in the past. I strongly believe that current
 > lexical_cast behaviour does not play nice with existing stream operators
 > (which are commonly written to assume whitespace is skipped). There's no
 > good reason for that, and lexical_cast should not use the "noskipws" flag.

  and I already decided to incorporate a modified version of lexical_cast
  into my project, because I'm sick to run into that kind of problem again
  and again.

- Roland