Re: [boost] [new Warnings policy] MS C4180 on the Maintenance Guidelines

Subject: Re: [boost] [new Warnings policy] MS C4180 on the Maintenance Guidelines
From: Steven Watanabe (watanabesj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-18 10:10:01

AMDG

Paul A. Bristow wrote:
> Guidelines
>
> I've tried to distill the many helpful comments on this as follows:
>
> ||C4800|| int' : forcing value to bool 'true' or 'false'||
>
> Use a bool valued expression.
>
> Write out expressions, for example: "value >= 0" or "ptr != 0" (Boost prefers
> clarity to curtness).
> Take care if using templates that constants are of the right type, for example
> you may need "static_cast<T>(1)". 
> Or use static_cast<bool>(expression). 
> Or suppress.
>
> ||#  pragma warning(disable: 4800) // int' : forcing value to bool 'true' or
> 'false'
>
> Hope this is better.  
>
> I note that this will mean quite a lot of work for some people as "if (ptr) ..."
> is such a common (and IMO dreadful) idiom.
>
> So I've left the getout clause "suppress" as a last resort.
>
> But this might encourage people to write new code in a nicer way.
>   

I think the most common cause of this warning is that std::type_info::before
(which is supposed to return bool) returns int instead.  Also, 
static_cast<bool>
doesn't suppress the warning.

In Christ,
Steven Watanabe