Boost logo

Boost :

Subject: [boost] [Review] Boost.Convert library last 3 days
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-04-30 07:22:10


This is a reminder that formal review of the Boost.Convert library by
Vladimir Batov has 3 more days and ends on May 2.

There have only been a small number of reviews and this is the last
weekend to review the library. I am hoping that programmers who may have
been busy during the week in their work will find time this weekend for
a review. The review period ends on Monday at midnight, so please get
your review in before the review period ends.
If you intend to do a review of the library but feel you would be late
in doing so, please contact me about it.

***************
* Its Purpose *
***************

The library builds on the past boost::lexical_cast experience, then
takes those conversion-related ideas further to suit better today's
applications and programing needs. It still offers simple, minimal
interface, familiar conversion behavior and additionally provides:

* throwing and non-throwing conversion-failure behavior;
* support for the default/fallback value to be returned when
conversion fails;
* two types of the conversion-failure check - basic/simple and
better/safe;
* formatting support based on the standard std::streams and
std::stream-based manipulators (like std::hex, std::scientific, etc.);
* support for different locales;
* support for boost::range-compliant char and wchar_t-based containers;
* no DefaultConstructibility requirement for the Target/Destination type;
* consistent framework to uniformly incorporate any type-to-type
conversions, extensibility and additional room to grow.

With its present support for string-to-type and type-to-string
conversions it is an essential tool for applications making extensive
use of configuration or MS-Windows-Registry-style files or having to
process/prepare considerable amounts of data in, say, XML, etc. More
so, it is easily extendable to accommodate, specialize and uniformly
deploy new user-defined type-to-type conversions.

*******************
* Where to get it *
*******************

You can get the library, using Subversion, from
https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/convert.

The HTML documentation is part of the distribution and can be found at
libs/convert/index.html in the distribution above.

********************
* Writing a review *
********************

The reviews and all comments should be submitted to the developers list,
and the email should have "[convert] Review" at the beginning of the
subject line to make sure it's not missed.

Please explicitly state in your review whether the library should be
accepted.

The general review checklist:

     - What is your evaluation of the design?
     - What is your evaluation of the implementation?
     - What is your evaluation of the documentation?
     - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the
       library?
     - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you
       have any problems?
     - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A
       quick reading? In-depth study?
     - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

And finally, every review should answer this question:

     - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library?

Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't
obscure your overall opinion.

Edward Diener,
Review Manager


Boost list run by bdawes at acm.org, gregod at cs.rpi.edu, cpdaniel at pacbell.net, john at johnmaddock.co.uk