Re: [boost] [convert] Now with Boost.Parameter interface.

Subject: Re: [boost] [convert] Now with Boost.Parameter interface.
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-07-06 20:17:31

Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
> 
> BTW: this interface above is easily implementable on top of Spirit. It's
> just a thin wrapper around existing functionality. And I already expressed
> my opinion that any high level conversion library should be built on top of
> Spirit - a proven, fast, reliable, versatile, and mature parser and
> generator framework. Anything else leads to code duplication,
> inconsistencies, implementation flaws, you name it. Converting a string of
> digits into an integer might seem to be an easy task. But it's not. It's
> tricky, error prone, and difficult to get correct _and_ fast at the same
> time.

I think the barrier to adoption is the size of the Spirit library and
its dependencies. For example, I'd be afraid to write a small library
that forces my users to depend on Proto, MPL, and Fusion too. That,
IMO, is too much to ask.

People might not be aware though that Spirit is very modular. The
numeric parsing/generating utilities are in fact just a couple of
small *independent* header files. It might be a good idea to
fully decouple them from Spirit into, say, Boost.Utilities.
This is becoming more pertinent now that more people are needing
them. Indeed, parsing and generating numbers is not easy. Make
no mistake.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://spirit.sf.net