Re: [boost] boost::format - incorrect (printf-incompatible) handling of "%u" with characters

From: Zack Weinberg (zackw_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-04 11:48:50

On 3/4/07, Phil Endecott <phil_ntaqi_endecott_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > In my opinion this is a bug - both operations should produce "65".
>
> See my previous report:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.user/23644
> which continues at
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.user/23664
>
> The conclusion at that time was that
> - you can just cast to an int if this is what you want.
> - you shouldn't be using bytes to store numbers - that's unnecessary
> size optimisation.
>
> I didn't agree with those conclusions, and I'm no longer using boost::format.

Yeah, I don't agree with those conclusions either.  Not all uses of
8-bit numbers are unnecessary size optimization.   Image data, for
example, commonly comes as 8 bits per pixel per color, and you may
want to print out the numeric values for debugging.  Stream ciphers
are often defined to produce one byte at a time of keystream.  In the
case that prompted this bug report, I was using 8-bit numbers as a
*time* optimization hint - the compiler needed to know that a
narrowing divide was safe.

[What did you replace boost::format with?]

zw