[boost] Re: Functions as Filters (was Program Reuse...)

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-01-13 01:40:32

Bob Bell wrote:

> quoted here is really quite minor. The second thing that's apparent
> is that your ToUpper relies on global variables, whereas
> toupper_filter relies on function arguments, which in my mind is a
> more heavily-weighted concern than the complexity difference. My
> question is why you do you think relying on globals is a better
> approach? Some of your points have been motivated by the needs of
> novice C++ programmers; do you really think it is better to advocate
> a programming style that relies on global variables?

I was going to mention the global variables, but in fairness I think the four
global streams have special status. If I could redesign the standard iostreams
library without concern for backward compatibility, I'd change a number of
things but I'm not sure I'd require users to write

     std::cout::instance() << "Hello World!\n";

I'm interested to know exactly what Christopher thinks is too complex about the
filter concepts, since I'm sure others will share his view. I suspect it's the
member templates and typedefs, but I'd like to hear it from him. Christopher?
;-)

Jonathan