Re: [boost] Interest in super string class?

From: Pavol Droba (droba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-03 09:19:10

Hi,

Jeff Garland wrote:
> 
> There's no restriction on for_each.  I think the value of transform versus 
> for_each for this case is marginal at best. As for trim versus trimmed, I'm 
> afraid I don't like trimmed much.  It's 'past tense'.  To my ear it strikes as 
> odd -- like the operation is already done.  I normally think of mutating 
> functions a present tense verbs. Just looking around a bit, 
> Boost.string_algo-trim, QTString-trimmed, Java.String-trim, RWCString-strip -- 
> so it's not that consistent.  As much as anything I'm leveraging 
> Boost.string_algo here, so consistent naming is a virtue.
> 
> Hopefully this won't make you mad, but your prior email made me realize that 
> the mutating functions should return a self reference so now you can write:
> 
>   s.trim().to_upper().append(" more stuff ");
> 
> The other thing it made me realize is that it would be handy to have 
> additional overloads on the number of parameters in append/insert_at. So in 
> the next version you'll be able to write:
> 
> double dbl = 1.12345;
> int i = 100;
> 
> s.append(dbl, " a string ", i);
> //"1.12345 a string 100"
> 
> I'll probably do something like boost.tuple and support up to 10 arbitrary 
> parameters.  And at the suggestion of someone else, I'm also adding 
> boost.format into the mix:
> 
> s.append_formatted(dbl, "-some string-", i, "%-7.2f  %s %=5d");
> //"1.12   -some string- 100  "
> 
> So I'm afraid I'm making it more mutable, not less ;-)

I was following this discussion closely. I must say that I kind of like
your class. Especially in the way you propose it - as a convenience
wrapper build on top of algorithms. Having both, we have win-win scenario.

Just one remark on top of mutable vs. copy.

As you said, the major reason for coming with this class was a clarity
of code. I must say, that when I read s.trim(), I pretty much assume,
that the operation is performed on 's'. So mutable is natural winner for
me here.

Regards,
Pavol