Re: [boost] Interest in super string class?

From: Thorsten Ottosen (thorsten.ottosen_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-07-04 13:46:01

Jeff Garland wrote:
> Thorsten Ottosen wrote:
> 
>>Jeff Garland wrote:
>>
>>>I've been working on a little project where I've had to doing lots of string 
>>>processing, so I decided to put together a string type that wraps up 
>>>boost.regex and boost.string_algo into a string type. I also remember a 
>>>discussion in the LWG about whether the various string algorithms should be 
>>>built in or not -- well consider this a test -- personally I find it easier 
>>>built into the string than as standalone functions.
>>
>>It might be slightly easier to use at first, but it goes directly 
> 
> 
> It doesn't stop being easier to use -- it's the same every day.  Your implicit 
> implication is that later on I'm going to find a bunch of extra functions that 
> I can't perform with super_string.  True enough.  At that point I either add 
> it to super_string or write it using the functional interface.  No big deal.

My implicit implication was that soon you'll feel comfortable with the
free-standing functions.

In php, there is not a single member functions in a string, and all 
string processing is done with free-standing functions. In general I 
find strings in php easy to work with:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.strings.php
http://dk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.regex.php

>>Not a good idea IMO.
> 
> 
> We disagree, obviously, and that's fine. Just to save some time, I'm pretty 
> sure it's impossible to convince me that range or something else is going to 
> solve my set of issues.

Probably not. I did not have that I mind. I think some extensions to 
range will make stuff like regexes easier, but it would give you "one 
place for all string processing".

> I'll just point out, that some of this was a result of recent brushes of mine 
> with other languages. I've been doing some coding lately in, gasp, Java and 
> Javascript.  As a diehard C++ developer, it ticks me off that I can sit down 
> with the manual for these languages and in 15 minutes whip up some fancy 
> string parsing code using regular expressions, etc.  It's all very nice and 
> neat.  Go to the string reference page -- see the list of functions and boom, 
> you're in business.  So it gets me thinking, why is it that C++ makes this so 
> hard?  Well, std::string isn't as capable as Java's string.  Of course, C++ 
> (with Boost) has all of the same capabilities, but it takes a truckload of 
> documentation and a masters degree to figure it all out. And then it's a pain 
> in the neck to use and read the code.  This is my attempt to rectify that.

If the problem is bad documentation/tutorials, then I think we should 
fix that instead.

For Java, many many people have been paid to write the documentation, 
whereas for boost, we have to do it our spare-time. It's pretty good 
most of the time anyway.

-Thorsten