Re: [boost] mistaken uses of <iostream>

From: Martin Wille (mw8329_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-11-20 04:49:31

Howard Hinnant wrote:

> It has recently come to my attention that I could be overly sensitive  
> to this issue and making a fuss about nothing.  So I'm writing here  
> for a reality check.  Do boost programmers consider the use of  
> <iostream> as a short cut to get to non-terminal-streams I/O a  
> reasonable technique?  Or do boost programmers feel that use of  
> <iostream> should be reserved only when using one or more of cin,  
> cout, cerr, clog, wcin, wcout, wcerr, wclog?

I consider it wrong

 * to include <iostream> when the standard streams do not get used
 * to include <iostream> as a shortcut for including <istream> and <ostream>

The latter isn't guaranteed to work, IIUC, since <iostream> could be
written as #include <iosfwd> \n extern std::ostream cout; etc. That way,
the free operator<<() functions from <ostream> do not get included and
some output will start to look funny.

Regards,
m
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