Re: [boost] [explore] Library Proposal: Container Streaming

Subject: Re: [boost] [explore] Library Proposal: Container Streaming
From: Jeffrey Bosboom (jbosboom_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-30 16:40:53

Jeffrey Faust wrote:
> Jared McIntyre, Danny Havenith, and myself, with support from Jeff
> Garland have developed a library to stream standard containers to output
> streams.  We would like to submit this for review.  The requirements for
> this library were gathered at the BoostCon 2007 Library in a Week
> sessions.  An initial review  was held and further requirements were
> gathered at BoostCon 2008.

I've written simple versions of streaming operators (both output and 
input) for the standard containers as a simple, low-barrier-to-entry 
form of serialization.  Do you plan to provide the input operators too? 
  (I understand this would involve some restrictions on the streamed 
forms of the container elements to prevent parsing ambiguity.)

As a technical question, how are the operators found?  They can't be 
added to std (adding to std is undefined behavior), and there's 
otherwise no one namespace to put them in that will allow them to be 
found for all element types (at least with my understanding of ADL).

By the way, "Explore" is a very uninformative name.

--Jeffrey Bosboom