Re: [boost] [TypeIndex] Peer review period for library acceptance begins, ending Thurs 21st Nov

Subject: Re: [boost] [TypeIndex] Peer review period for library acceptance begins, ending Thurs 21st Nov
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-11-24 16:06:15

On 22 Nov 2013 at 18:28, Gottlob Frege wrote:

>  > There is something to be said for eliminating the name() function
>  altogether ...
> 
> Yes, first determine what types of name functions you want (mangled,
> demangled, compatible, unique, etc).
> Then supply ALL those functions.

Indeed, this is what I suggested to Antony off-list:

/*! Returns a static const char string of unknown format uniquely 
identifying this type. The only guarantee is that this string will be
unique to the type within this process lifetime.*/

const char *unique_name() const noexcept;

/*! Returns a representation of this type suitable for printing.
This call may take some time as its storage may not be cached.*/

std::string pretty_name() const;

class enum mangling
{
  Native, //!< Whatever the native mangling used by this toolset is
  MSVC, //!< The Microsoft C++ mangling format
  Itanium //!< The Itanium C++ mangling format
};

/*! Returns the mangled form of the string representation of the 
type.
After the calculation the value is cached statically such that the 
c_str()
function can be used to convert the returned string to a const char *
format identical to what may be returned by std::type_info::name() 
(or
raw_name() on MSVC). This function may throw an exception if it does 
not
support mangled type string calculation, including when 
mangling=Native on
some platforms.*/

const std::string &mangled_name(mangling=Native) const;

Note I have not convinced Antony of the merit of this approach (i.e. 
of not providing a name() function at all, and leaving it up to user 
code to subclass boost::type_index if so desired with something which 
does implement some name() function locally to that specific 
library).

Thanks for the feedback Tony, and I hope things at our former 
employer aren't too bad.

Niall

-- 
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Work Portfolio: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nialldouglas/