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

From: Yuval Ronen (ronen_yuval_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-11 01:28:30

Yuval Ronen wrote:
> OK. If only boost::lexical_cast was doing it, we could actually use it...

And maybe not even then.

Providing a uniform interface for conversion from any type to any type 
using an intermediate string sounds good at first, but when you think of 
it, it's quite useless. I've *never* had any need to convert between two 
types via a string. All I needed was to serialize to string, and 
de-serialize from string. These two usages are inherently different 
because de-serialization can fail, while serialization always succeeds. 
This means different interface by two separate functions - the 
de-serialization interface (and only it) should account for error handling.

Insisting on the current cast-like interface is no good, since it 
prevents much needed interface improvements such the one I mentioned, 
and others Stefan Slapeta mentioned in his post.

I hope the interface accepted to the standard will take this into account...

Yuval