Re: [boost] Report from Berlin C++ Standards Committee meeting

From: Stefan Slapeta (stefan_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-10 07:35:56

Maxim Yegorushkin wrote:

> In the real world practicality beats purity. The fact is people do not
> use boost::lexical_cast because of the aforementioned problems.

I second this! boost::lexical_cast in its current form/implementation is 
  usable in hardly any real project situation because of many downsides.

The only thing what is nice about this utility at the moment actually is 
its pretty interface, which wouldn't be so pretty if it handled all the 
requirements if should IMO. Those issues araised again and again on the 
boost list, but nobody felt ever responsible even to comment them in a 
sufficient way, some people always referring to the 'nice interface' 
which should never be touched in any way.

I don't remember all the issues people complained about in many threads, 
  I remember some of them which are really crucial and need to be dealt 
with:

- performance, performance, performance
- error handling
- controlling the conversions via facets

There may be some others and maybe we should put up a complete list. I'm 
afraid, if lexical_cast is standardized as is, people will always have 
to go back to C library functions to do their conversions. I really 
can't imagine that we are the only ones who have major ressentiments 
agains lexical_cast in its current form!

Stefan