Re: [boost] Inquiry of standardization status of boost::format

From: Douglas Gregor (doug.gregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-08-15 07:40:25

On Aug 15, 2007, at 3:19 AM, manphiz wrote:

> Phil Endecott wrote:
>> This stuff will all be much easier once we have variadic templates,
>> i.e. you will be able to have a type-safe sprintf in C++.  You can  
>> now
>> get a version of gcc that supports them, and they should be in C++0x.
>> So unless you have some very urgent reason to change immediately, I
>> suggest that you wait for a bit.
>>
>> (I imagine that this means that the operator%-style Boost.Format will
>> not progress towards the standard library, but I am not in any  
>> position
>> to comment on that.)
>>
>
> Maybe the operator%-style can be obsolete (and I don't like it either)
> in favor of variadic templates magic, but plain sprintf still  
> cannot be
> directly used to deal with std::string, is it?

Why not? Variadic templates make it possible to implement a sprintf- 
like interface that supports all data types (strings, user-defined  
types, etc.) and checks the format string against the actual argument  
types to provide better type safety. They give us a chance to revisit  
the Format interface to determine whether we can do better with new  
features; that might mean bringing back the old-but-familiar (s) 
printf interface with added functionality.

        - Doug