Re: [boost] construe_cast, call for interest and feedback

Subject: Re: [boost] construe_cast, call for interest and feedback
From: Jeroen Habraken (vexocide_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-10-09 11:19:41

On 9 October 2010 14:42, PB <newbarker_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> Rather than introducing another casting method, could lexical_cast be
> reworked internally to build upon Spirit? That way previous
> investments in lexical_cast will just work faster with no changes,
> Also, I won't need to stop and think which one I should be using.

This is something for the boost community to decide when it's time for
it to be reviewed. I don't know if I'm able to create something that's
fully backwards compatible with lexical_cast (probably not).

> The other comment I have is about compilation times with Spirit. Would
> a client of construe_cast be pulling in the Spirit headers? If so, my
> compiler (VC9/VS2008) would take a lot longer to build the compilation
> unit. I don't mind this overhead for source files that are using
> Spriit to do non-trivial parsing, but for casts to/from ints and
> strings which are very common, I wouldn't want to wait for such long
> compiles.

Compiling a simple example takes about 3.7 seconds on my machine with
gcc 4.5.1, and Adam Merz tested it with VS2010 and was pleasantly
surprised by the time it took to compile, he expected worse (I'm
afraid I don't have any real numbers, I currently don't have a Windows
machine around). Whether or not the runtime gains are worth the longer
compilation times is ultimately for you to decided.

> Regards,
>
> Pete

Jeroen