Re: [boost] [RFC] string inserter/extractor "q u o t i n g"

Subject: Re: [boost] [RFC] string inserter/extractor "q u o t i n g"
From: Rob Stewart (robertstewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-06-22 22:49:30

On 6/18/2010 1:10 PM, Beman Dawes wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 6:38 AM, Stewart, Robert<Robert.Stewart_at_[hidden]>  wrote:
>> Beman Dawes wrote:
>>>
>>> To speed the process, I'll just give a progress report rather than
>>> respond individually prior messages.
>>
>> Apparently, by virtue of not mentioning my suggestion in this omnibus reply, you rejected my idea of a string algorithm for doing the quoting and unquoting which forms the foundation of the insertion and extraction manipulators.  I still think that is the best approach as it doesn't force the use of std::stringstream to get a quoted or unquoted string from an existing string while still supporting the IOStream insertion and extraction needed by Filesystem.
>
> In principle, I agree with you. In practice, I don't really want to
> take the time to develop the algorithms, tests, documentation, etc.
> Perhaps someone else could take that on.

Well, then.  I've done a fair bit of it.  I've attached quote.hpp 
and unquote.hpp, plus a simple test program.

I haven't written any documentation, and the test isn't up to 
snuff, but it's enough to prove the algorithms.  There may be 
room to improve unquote()'s logic; I didn't spend a lot of time 
on it.

My intention is that unquote() should handle a string with 
multiple quoted substrings rather than just assuming that the 
entire string is quoted.  It is certainly reasonable to think 
that it should only handle whole strings.  In that case, it would 
be easy to identify malformed strings on input: either it starts 
and ends with the delimiter, and all other occurrences are 
escaped, or it is malformed.

I quickly chose to throw std::logic_error from unquoted() when it 
fails to find a closing delimiter.  There may well be a better 
approach; feel free to suggest alternatives.

Have a look at the code and let me know what you think.

___
Rob