Re: [boost] [asio] some stuff about ipv4::address

From: Christopher Kohlhoff (chris_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-03 07:18:47

Hi Yuval,

--- Yuval Ronen <ronen_yuval_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> What I dislike is the string-accepting contructor and the
> to_string() method. My personal taste is that textual
> conversions (and the ip::address class is a very good
> candidate for this) should be made through the standard
> ostream/istream operators. This has the usual advantages of
> using an idiom. It also provides standard means to detect
> parsing error using the ios_base::fail bit. The ip::address
> currently has the only option of throwing in the
> string-accepting contructor, however, this is not intuitive,
> IMHO (and not documented). String conversions can be easily
> performed using boost::lexical_cast.

I think the current string conversion functions are convenient
and natural, and I see them not being coupled to iostreams as a
feature :)

However I take your point about non-throwing parsing, so I will
add both input and output iostream operations for the address
class (and the endpoint classes too).

> Another thing is the plethora of assingment operators.
> Wouldn't a single copy-assignment be enough?

For the current implementation, probably yes. But I don't want
the interface to assume that the implementation will always be
so cheap as to not worry about extra temporaries.

> And one last suggestion: A construtor taking 4 unsigned chars,
> allowing this: asio::ipv4::address my_address(192, 168, 0, 1);

No problem, I can add that.

Cheers,
Chris