Re: [boost] [review] string convert

Subject: Re: [boost] [review] string convert
From: Vladimir Batov (vbatov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-05-05 22:16:29

> Ivan Le Lann <ivan.lelann <at> free.fr> writes:
>> "Vladimir Batov" <vbatov <at> people.net.au> a écrit :
>> Was it too much to ask? How many libraries can claim to support an
>> attitude like
>> -- I do not want to read the documentation, I want to call those
>> functions as I see fit and I expect them to work correctly?
> 
> I dislike the idea that documentation should fix misleading names.

I would not say that the purpose of the documentation is to fix misleading
names. I'd say it's to let the user get better understanding if his expectations
match the author's vision, design and actual implementation.

I understand that one might have certain expectations about, say,
convert<int>::from() returning some particular type. However, it needs to be
kept in mind that other people might have different expectations or no
expectations at all. I quite honestly fail to understand why so much emphasis is
put onto "expectations". To write a modestly decent code one must have
documentation by his side. Even for something as seemingly basic as lexical_cast
one has to *read* and learn that it throws and needs op>>, etc. In fact,
"lexical" is about strings. So, lexical_cast<int> must be converting 'int' to a
'string'. Or is it an unreasonable expectation? :-) And out of curiosity what
expectations do people actually have from spirit::karma and spirit::qi?

Uh, that was merely a rant. Ignore it.

V.