Re: [boost] Is there interest in copyable type_info that does notrequire RTTI (was: Is there interest in typeid(TYPE).name()like function that does not require RTTI)

Subject: Re: [boost] Is there interest in copyable type_info that does notrequire RTTI (was: Is there interest in typeid(TYPE).name()like function that does not require RTTI)
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-05-31 12:46:33

Daniel Larimer wrote:
> Yes there is interest.  I would like to disable RTTI but cannot
> because of boost::any and boost::function.
>
> I even wrote my own 'typeinfo' template/macro that allows me to
> register all of the types I care about.   I think having the ability
> to 'override' the value returned, perhaps a pretty_name(), such that
> get_template_info<std::string>().pretty_name() => "std::string" or
> perhaps even "string" would be useful.
>
> This almost gets into some basic level of reflection.   The ability
> to query 'parts' of the name may be useful... such as
> get_template_info<std::string>().namespace() => "std"
>

Hmmm - this looks pretty similar to the "extended_type_info" facility
which is documented as part of the serialization library.  This
facility was required to implement loading of derived classes
through a base class pointer.  It includes a class factory which
constructs a class instance at runtime given it's name as a string.

The (sub)library includes multiple implementations.  One
is based on rtti and another one similar to that described above.

Robert Ramey