Re: [boost] [lexical_cast] A non-throwing lexical cast? [Was: 5 Observations - My experience with the boost libraries]

Subject: Re: [boost] [lexical_cast] A non-throwing lexical cast? [Was: 5 Observations - My experience with the boost libraries]
From: Kim Barrett (kab.conundrums_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-03-25 14:57:49

On Mar 25, 2010, at 2:17 PM, Bruno Santos wrote:
>>>>> boost::lexical_cast - throws. Almost always needs to be caught
>>>>> and re-thrown.
>>>> Why? Is it because you need to do some cleanup? Do you known what
>>>> RAII is?
>>> 
>>> Exception translation, i.e. "re-thrown" as in "thrown in a different
>>> form". boost::bad_lexical_cast is not derived from
>>> my_project::invalid_user_input o or whatever. This happens a lot with
>>> boost::lexical_cast.
>> 
> 
> What about boost::system::error_code as the second parameter for the non
> throwing version? And it does not suffer from the return error code
> problem. Just take a look at boost::filesystem and boost::asio.

The point was that the present interface for boost::lexical_cast often leads to try/catch blocks.

I like this suggestion of a second error_code argument a lot.