[boost] Interest in specialized types

Subject: [boost] Interest in specialized types
From: Henning Basold (h.basold_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-08-22 11:49:39

  Hello,

in http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/207794 Robert 
Ramey talked about wrapping some POD to increase type safety. Some time 
ago I used something similar to ensure that misuse of values can be 
found by the compiler.

So I think that is something that can be generalized. The concept is to 
wrap a type into a class and restrict the interface. This ensures that 
values from one context (e.g. an id) can't be used in another context 
(e.g. adding of number or as an id for other objects).

Attached is a very simple implementation where the needed concepts can 
be specified as parameter. To distinguish for example between different 
id types also a tag type can be specified.

Do you think this might be a useful utility? Or is there something 
similar already available? I've searched the vault but did not find 
anything.

Regards
Henning