Re: [boost] [review] string convert

Subject: Re: [boost] [review] string convert
From: Stewart, Robert (Robert.Stewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-05-04 09:29:21

Vicente BOTET wrote:
> De : "Stewart, Robert"
> > Vicente BOTET wrote:
> > > De : "Stewart, Robert"
>
> > What your three options don't address, then, is indicating
> > conversion failure, without an exception, for a type with
> > neither a default constructor nor a usable sentinel value.
> > That was the purpose of Vladimir's result type: it could be
> > queried for success and for the value.
>
> Please, check the post around May 03, 2011; 10:09pm that
> includes a file with the complete post without angle brackets
> issues. There you will find all the cases.

I thought you were proposing those three options as the solution.  I now understand that you still meant for an error_code overload or a no_throw overload to be the means to determine whether conversion fails without relying on fallback values.

The latter involves returning a pair<value, bool> which I dislike.  boost::optional would be better as it supports safe-bool and a more meaningful get() for extracting the value (versus .second and .first for your pair).

If there's truly value in using an error_code, that interface is good because it affords the ability to provide more specific diagnostics.  Otherwise, I'd prefer the optional interface with nothrow or even a "try" variant to avoid the argument.

> > I haven't looked at the design of your library, but
> > presumably these assignment operators are on a conversion
> > type.  Your conversion type's state is being set from
> > another type in the various assignment operators, which is
> > the normal sense of assignment, but your purpose of doing so
> > is simply to provide the source value in order to extract it
> > subsequently as the target type. That seems an abuse of
> > assignment.
>
> If you have a class C1 you can define the following operator
>
> C1& operator=(C2 const& rhs);
>
> As I understand this, we are converting a C2 to a C1 via an
> assignment.

A constructor with such an argument is, certainly, a converting constructor.  While I don't think of assignment in the same terms, it is not much of a stretch to consider it similar.  Nevertheless, the assignments in your case are to a converter, not to the target type, which I still contend is abusing assignment.

> The assign_to function is a way do it extrinsically, i.e.
> outside any of the classes C1, C2.
>
> C1& assign_to(C1 & lhs, C2 const& rhs);
>
> We can say assign_to is to C1& operator=(C1&,C2const&) as
> boost::swap(C&lhs,C&rhs) is to C::swap(C& rhs).

Your assignment operators are not on the target type, but on a converting proxy.  Using assign_to() implies that the operation is lhs = rhs, but that's incorrect.  The operation is, instead, lhs = f(rhs), where f() applies some transformation to rhs to produce lhs.  Hence, "assign_to" is the wrong name.

_____
Rob Stewart                           robert.stewart_at_[hidden]
Software Engineer                     using std::disclaimer;
Dev Tools & Components
Susquehanna International Group, LLP  http://www.sig.com




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