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

From: Chris Cleeland (cleeland_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-01-06 10:58:07

On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Pedro Lamarão wrote:

> Chris Cleeland wrote:
> >>
> >>I suppose you meant four unsigned shorts?
> > 
> > An IPv4 address is comprised of four octets, and an unsigned char 
> > sufficiently represents an octet.  A short would be overkill, no?
> 
> I see, you meant an implicit conversion to char?

Whatever is necessary.  If the args were shorts (signed or unsigned), the 
interface is representing that the following would be legal:

   asio::ipv4::address my_address(322, 798, 0, 1024);

And we know that's not correct.  If the caller trusts implicit conversions 
rather than explicitly passing unsigned chars, then that's their problem.

> I still fail to see a use case for this.
> Help me here. :)

I can't help you with that, as I did not originate the suggestion.  The only 
thing I can conjure in my mind is when parsing a string representation of an 
address, particularly a dotted-decimal representation.  Typically this sort 
of stuff is handled by functions like inet_aton, but I can see where one 
might prefer to not rely on external, non-standard functions like that.

-- 
  Chris Cleeland, cleeland_c @ ociweb.com, http://www.milodesigns.com/~chris
     Principal Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc., [phone]
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