[boost] [endian] Request for comments

Subject: [boost] [endian] Request for comments
From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-04-27 17:18:07

There are two things that I suspect need to be fixed in Boost.Endian, but 
the changes are breaking.

1. endian_arithmetic<...> derives publicly from endian_buffer<...>. 
Intuitively, this inheritance relationship doesn't seem right, and it 
prevents endian_arithmetic from being a C++03 POD, due to having a base 
class.

2. the data() member function returns char const*. This type is strongly 
associated with null-terminated strings, and as such, using it for the 
underlying bytes of the endian object seems error-prone. I'd much prefer to 
return `unsigned char const*` from data() (although in C++17 `std::byte 
const*` might be even better.)

I can't however estimate with any certainty whether the (mostly aesthetic) 
benefit of these changes would outweigh the users' annoyance from their code 
being broken for no strong reason.

Comments?